


Die Fürsprache (bait and switch)

by sevendials



Series: Bait and Switch [1]
Category: Weiss Kreuz
Genre: Angst, Dark, M/M, Sexual Violence, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-11-18
Updated: 2005-11-17
Packaged: 2017-10-21 03:32:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 7
Words: 21,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/220443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevendials/pseuds/sevendials
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even the simplest plans can go horribly wrong. Cornered by Schuldig when an apparently straightforward mission descends into chaos, Ken is made an offer he has no choice but to accept.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Apostate

**Author's Note:**

> Standard Copyright Disclaimer: _Weiss Kreuz_ , it’s characters, indices, and everything else about it remain the property of Kyoko Tsuchiya, Koyasu Takehito, Project Weiss and Movic, as well as the individuals and groups who perpetrated the terrible US dub. I’m writing this only because I have time on my hands, a head full of twisted visions and my plot bunnies are driving me mad, not because I have any notion of profiting from my strange fondness for bizarre and sadistic slash pairings.
> 
> Author’s notes: Written in 2005 and posted at adultfanfiction.net, this fic popped pretty much fully-formed into my head one evening and refused to go away never mind that I tried to ignore it for weeks – all that happened was the idea refined itself and attracted angst aplenty and got yet more insistent that it had to be written, or else. The muse, as in the case of ‘A step forward into night’ really was most insistent. This fic has a fair bit in common with that earlier work, too, as I didn’t particularly want to sit down and write this either. I don’t particularly like the sadistic tone of this fic, but sadly that was always part of the conception. Where I get ideas like this I really don’t know.
> 
> Warnings: Dark fic, suitable for mature readers only. Bad language, violence, physical and psychological abuse, m/m rape. If any of the above offends you then please, please read no further. Thank you.

Half-drowned in nothing but air he leans on the door, head back, and waits, trying to control his own almost frantic gasps for breath as he desperately snatches at quiet and calm. He knows his hiding-place to be pathetically inadequate, that salvation will come only in silence and silence as the only weapon he has left. Almost without meaning to he closes his eyes, holds his breath. An adult amplification of a child’s game and he’d never been very good at hide and seek. It hadn’t used to matter. Maybe it still doesn’t.

It sometimes occurs to Ken that to survive at all is merely optional.

The target is down; he knows the rest of it isn’t really what counts. Getting out alive and in one piece is strictly a secondary objective and important to nobody but himself and, of course, the team. He owes it to the team to live but Ken has always known deep down that he, they, all of them are disposable. When it comes down to it Kritiker doesn’t care if Weiss live or die as long as they take those they came for with them. They are replaceable. The survival instinct is only a habit he can’t quite find it in himself to break. Always competitive, he can’t see the point of a victory which nobody can celebrate; he never could. Ken is getting good at living.

He waits in the empty darkness for the sound of nothing at all. For the return of silence that tells him his pursuer has given up the chase, gone to find more interesting and amenable prey. Single-minded though his perversely pale shadow, the scarred and smiling Schwarz lunatic, has proved up till now Ken can’t imagine a creature like that will have the patience for an extended hunt. A twisted psycho like that wouldn’t care whose blood he spilled as long as someone was hurting, surely? He can’t believe a man like that will lose too much sleep over losing him.

Always the simple ones, he thinks sarcastically. What is it about simple missions, why is it they always turn out like this? On paper they make sense, logical and neatly numbered as any pedant’s To-Do list, but just try and do them and watch it all break down. It should have been so _easy_. Get in, get the target, get out; one, two, three.

Part one and part two have, of course, been no problem at all. Survival is the sticking point.

Nobody had mentioned Schwarz. They knew the target was well-connected – aren’t they all? It’s an old story and a tired one, one Ken has heard a hundred times before – but, or so he supposes, the guy’s friends must be one Hell of a lot more powerful than they’d thought. Nobody had even hinted at the possibility they might have been compromised but someone must have known they were coming. That same someone was now going to be heartily pissed that the target, their friend or associate or whoever, was dead. Someone, Ken knows, wants Weiss to pay for it. Killing their employer’s killers will be one way for their former target’s guards to recoup some small measure of success in the face of failure… they were left no choice but to scatter, to end up smeared all over the goddamned map; the comm. went eerily silent some half an hour ago. Ken believes the others are still alive because he doesn’t know what else to do. They should have left it, should never have gone in. Not that they’d ever had any choice in the matter. Twenty-twenty hindsight, huh?

Silence insinuates itself back around him, closes in on him, becomes stifling and oppressive. Even to breathe in this empty, echoing space seems to be to invite betrayal. Quick, furtive, anxious, Ken glances back over his shoulder at the closed door he has bolted through, palpable mainly by the thin line of light seeping around its edges. He knows without having to ask that he is alone. He closes his eyes briefly, feels tension break and himself relax. It feels like coming up for air, a brief blissful moment of warmth and light and calm before he willingly slips under again, losing himself in chaos.

Instinct tells him to head forward; Ken gives instinct its head. There is nothing but havoc at his back. If he were to go forward instead – wherever it takes him it will be away from where he came. Away from the guards and their wheezing, prancing dogs and that pale madman whose face promises nothing but pain and Aya shoving him forward by the shoulder and barking at him to run…

—that’s an order, Siberian!

And Aya, or so Ken tells himself, will be all right. He can look after himself. They both can.

He stands, he realizes, overlooking what appears to be a neglected back staircase, illuminated only by the inadequate light falling from a skylight set into the ceiling. He hasn’t really noticed the thrum of a fan, grinding and scraping in a low and endless undertone somewhere above his head, before now but now he notices it and it irritates him: like glass chafing on glass or the squeak of markers on paper, it sets his teeth on edge. Stray sound is caught and amplified by vast, echoing space, a sound it isn’t quite possible to ignore completely and which Ken thinks he could very quickly grow to detest. A stale space, this, dust-thick and clogged with snared, decaying air.

Somewhere in the background, the trapped and furious dissonance of men’s voices, both unobtrusively familiar. But distant, too distant yet for Ken to catch anything other than the tone of their conversation, the undercurrent of anger and thinly-veiled threat.

He isn’t even a circumspect halfway down the stairs – treading carefully, trying by caution to negate echoes and keep his presence a soft secret – when he hears the shots. _Bang bang bang_ each one coming hard on the other’s heels as if, how strange, as if the gunman has suddenly realized he has somewhere better to be and then a cry, a cry more of surprise than it is of pain or fear. Youji’s voice.

Youji.

Youji has been shot.

“Oh, shit,” Ken says, and his own voice is full of hushed, understated horror. Startled into complete immobility, he catches himself staring at the scrupulous blankness that is the white-painted wall in front of him in frozen shock, one hand grasping the balustrade beside him as if he hopes to steady himself on it. A pause to think, but Ken isn’t thinking. Acting only on the intuition that something is hideously, unbearably wrong, he starts forward, taking the rest of the stairs at a run, jumping the last half-flight and finding himself, dizzy and slightly disoriented and too angry to care, standing in front of a half-open door revealing a small slice of a basement room barely any better lit than the stairwell he waits in. His pause, momentary though it is, is for breath and not for thought.

Because Kritiker doesn’t care for Weiss; Weiss cares for Weiss. Ken will not let another team down.

He shoves the door open with vivacious force. The thud as it is caught up short by the bare wall and swings back toward him is too loud and yet anticlimactic after the report of the gun. The noise is a betrayal in itself and, were he to allow himself the luxury of thinking about it, Ken would be infuriated with himself for giving himself away. Subtlety would have worked better but he is far too angry to think of that.

Ken doesn’t think. He can’t afford to. Two paces and he stops short, wide-eyed and staring in furious incomprehension into the room.

Wide, damp, echoing space, this room. Its cluttered metal gallery is supported by a flimsy arrangement of girders that spans its length, the concrete walls cracked and stained with streaks of damp, the dark spatters of encroaching mold and Christ knows what else. The far end of the room forms a low balcony of sorts, trapped pointlessly behind guardrails raised a few feet off the floor, presumably to keep it largely dry. It looks like a movie set, perhaps, or something out of a computer game – something pointlessly sinister, designed simply to be obstructive and not somewhere that should ever possess a purpose (what is this place? Warehouse, loading bay, observation suite?). The air smells damp and tainted. Nobody, Ken realizes, comes here if they can avoid it. High above his head something drips soft and rhythmic to the floor; incidental music, it serves only to add the final touch of absurd melodrama to the scene. Already he wants to get out of here.

Schuldig stands casual and eerily out of place at the end of the room, holding his still-smoking gun by his side and gazing, his expression full of nothing but bored imperturbability, over his shoulder at Ken, as if his arrival in this clammy, half-forgotten place were only to be expected. And Youji lies sprawled on the balcony at Schuldig’s feet, thick trails of blood, glistening moistly and malignly in the dim light, smeared across the concrete wall behind him where he has fallen.

For a single horrible moment Ken believes Youji is dead only to see him take a single shuddering breath, and that’s almost worse than his death would be. There is no danger in death. Unconscious? Maybe. No way of telling. No way of knowing, not with Schuldig here— he’s gonna kill him, Ken realizes and, though he feels no surprise, he is appalled. He can’t kill Youji, Ken thinks furiously. I won’t goddamn well _let_ him!

“Get _away_ from him!”

Schuldig sighs. He irritably quirks one eyebrow even as a slow, languid smile traces its lazy way across his lips. His grip on the handgun tightens subtle but sure as he turns to face Ken, raising the gun and grinning furtively at him down its length. His grin is a conspiracy. It is as if he and Ken are sharing a furtive, awkward secret, a secret Ken cannot trust him not to tell. Ken scowls resentfully, tensing.

“What’s it worth?” Schuldig asks.

He hasn’t been expecting Ken to listen to him, not yet, though he gives a soft yet theatrical _tsk_ and shakes his head in resignation at the way the boy moves, darting toward him, all furious life and surprisingly graceful motion. Something strange and elegant about it, about that display of unthinking physicality. Schuldig’s smile doesn’t falter as his finger tightens on the trigger of the gun, its single soft click easily eclipsed by the harsh, sharp _crack_ of the single shot. It is nothing but a warning, its purpose only to bring the boy up short; Ken, uninjured, uninterested, barely notices it. Small wonder, Schuldig realizes. This is Farfarello’s kitty, isn’t it?

Ken has lashed out at Schuldig before he really realizes that is his intention; he aims a blow at the man’s chest which Schuldig, smirking, darts easily clear of, meaning the blow manages little more than to shear through the lapels of his jacket. Before Schuldig can recover and react Ken has already drawn back, his eyes full of frustration, instinctively raising one arm to protect his face. He is furious and looks it; acts it, too. Schuldig can tell Ken isn’t really thinking about what he is doing. He only acts, reacts, and trusts it will be enough. Too trusting by far. Schuldig makes a grab for his wrist only for Ken, cursing softly, to hastily pull clear of his grasp, slipping back and out of reach. He is faster than Schuldig were expecting and considerably more agile; yes, Weiss are good, Schuldig thinks idly, but never quite good enough. Ken is too instinctive. At the mercy of his own emotions, he leaves himself wide open and never even realizes it.

… Perhaps pain will do, then.

A single fluid motion has Schuldig, smiling as if at some secret surmise, raising the gun again and firing almost before Ken can comprehend that he has moved. Ken cries out briefly as the bullet catches him in his side, the impact knocks him from his feet. Wincing, he lands heavily on his back, pressing one arm protectively over the wound and glaring up at Schuldig in frustrated opposition as the man comes to stand over him. He is already trying to get to his feet as Schuldig turns the gun on him again, aiming it at a spot just between his brows.

“Hands where I can see them and don’t move, Weiss.”

And what choice is there, when any attempt to fight back would kill Youji too? Placing his hands by his sides Ken freezes, trying to ignore the blossoming pain in his flank as he watches Schuldig suspiciously. His posture betrays tension; he holds himself aptly catlike, all coiled strength poised to spring. Waiting, but waiting for what? What good will it do him? Oh, Christ, Ken realizes, I'm going to die— and he feels only frustration and anger and a furious resentment, directed at himself as much as it is at Schuldig. Mary Mother of God but he’d been stupid!

By the looks of things Schuldig has been thinking along exactly the same lines. Knows what he is thinking. “That wasn’t very clever now, was it?”  
“Go to Hell,” Ken retorts. Terse, instinctive response, camouflaging fear with anger.  
“Oh, dear. Not very polite, are you?” Schuldig says teasingly. “You’ll get yourself into big trouble one of these days if you don’t learn to watch your mouth.”

Ken says nothing, refusing to rise to it. As if he weren’t in big trouble already! He wonders if he can risk calling in to the others, radio silence be damned, only to realize that at some point during the all-too-brief clash he has lost his comm. He’d always said they needed to improve the design on the bloody things. All he can do is glare at Schuldig, hoping he looks a lot braver than he feels, and waits for the man to get on with it – get on and kill him. He knows he is going to die here. They both are, Youji and himself… Ken wants to kick himself. How could he have been such a goddamned idiot? And all Schuldig does is watch him, cool and uninterested, as if he doesn’t really matter. He won’t matter, not to Schuldig…

He almost flinches when the man speaks again. “Well?”  
Ken blinks. He can’t help himself. “ _Well_ , what?” Why, he wonders, has Schuldig started talking to him?  
“I asked you a question.” Schuldig speaks patiently, as if he can’t believe how obtuse Ken is being. “You want me to leave Balinese over there be, don’t you? So then, Kenken… what’s it worth to you that he stays safe?”  
“What?” The question is born only of surprise. Is, Ken wonders, he thinking what I think he is? But that’s insane! Isn’t it…? No need to ask what Schuldig means. Ken can at least guess at the import of it. He already understands – doesn’t he? – the meaning behind Schuldig’s collaborator’s smile, though he can hardly believe he’s correctly guessed at its import.

(Okay, where’s the catch?)

“What’s it worth, Kenken?” Schuldig asks again. Mocking, challenging, a spiteful adolescent goading a classmate into unthinking action. _Kenken_. The boy winces slightly. Where’d Schuldig heard that? As if he doesn’t quietly loathe his nickname at the best of times, as if it doesn’t sound bad enough from Youji’s lips. Youji— has Schuldig planned this?

Call it a proposition, Kenken. Call it a pact. The hideous presumption of it leaves Ken astounded, disgusted, furious. What is this, some twisted way of killing time? And then for Schuldig to assume that he’ll just nod and smile, play along… he should tear the bastard’s throat out on general principle and he can’t. Christ, what a stupid situation. Ken Hidaka strikes again.

“Are you out of your fucking _mind_?” Ken demands. “Do you really think I’d ever bargain with you?”  
“Do you really think,” Schuldig echoes playfully, turning the question on its head, “that you’ve got any choice?”

No escaping the threat in his voice. Do you want to die, Siberian? Do you want your teammate to? That was the only real question, barely even half-concealed behind Schuldig’s politician’s smile and his playfully baleful teasing. What’s it worth to keep Balinese here alive? But it was one thing to be asked that question for all it may have remained inarticulate (unvoiced and therefore only too easy to ignore completely) in the heat of the moment; quite another to be asked it, and out loud, in circumstances such as this. It would, Ken knows, be simplicity itself to sacrifice himself unknowingly for a teammate, without really realizing that was what he was doing; it would be harder by far to gratuitously and knowingly throw his life away simply because he had to.

It’s me or the both of us, Ken realizes. What choice does he have?

“You see, I'm not crazy, Kenken. I’m giving you a choice here. Of course, if you’d rather I killed you both…” Schuldig leaves the sentence unfinished. Leaves the thought hanging in midair. A life for a life, isn’t that the way it goes?  
“You wouldn’t let him go,” Ken says softly, frantically. He realizes, all of a sudden, that he is frightened.  
“No, maybe not,” Schuldig replies calmly, and gives Ken a lopsided smirk. “You want to take the chance that you’re wrong?”

Because Ken has already decided and Schuldig realizes it just as plainly as he does himself. Because there is absolutely nothing else he can do. This one, Schuldig knows, is a fool for his friends; he fears for their well-being in a way he has long since ceased to fear for his own. Ken needs to see Youji safe. He needs to know he hasn’t betrayed these men too, in the way he betrayed the others. He doesn’t care or rather, Schuldig notes with a sardonic smile, he thinks he doesn’t care what the cost to himself might be. It makes his decision nothing but an inevitability.

So they wait, but they await nothing but the confirmation of what they both know to be unavoidable. Another part of the same game. What, Ken wonders, am I doing?

“Okay,” Ken says into the suffocating silence, and his voice is already resigned. “What do I have to do?”


	2. Intercession

The floor is slippery and cold, shining like rain-slick paving in the dim overhead light; the damp creeps insidiously upon him, soaking into his jeans and, even through the gauntlets he wears, chilling his palms. His heavy leather jacket seems to offer him no protection at all. The quiet _tick_ of dripping water sounds somewhere behind him, punctuating the silence. Ken is cold. No wonder it feels so dank here; the humidity is almost tangible. He feels as if, were he to choose to, he could reach out and wring water from the air. He wonders how badly Youji has been hurt.

Schuldig only smiles. Ken thinks he knows what he wants from him; he is wrong. Death, for Weiss, would come too easy. There is more than one way to tear a man apart.

“Clever boy,” he says archly, enjoying the way Ken scows at him, giving free reign to his irritation in the hope of camouflaging anxiety. The boy is nervous – not exactly frightened or at least not yet, but obviously uncertain, lost somewhere strange and unsettling whose habits he cannot even hope to comprehend. For all he might try to pretend a certain indifference to the situation his uncertainty is palpable, detectable as a discreet agony even before Schuldig thinks to look closer. What do I have to do? As if Schuldig would tell him. He enjoys the spectacle of Ken's insecurity. “You’re armed,” he points out, and his voice is full of cold, scrupulous unconcern. It is as if Ken's vulnerability is no concern of his, nothing whatsoever to do with him. “Lose the weapon, kid.”

He’d known it was coming but still Ken can’t claim the thought of being unarmed in front of a Schwarz doesn’t unnerve him, or leave him even more so than he is already. That it won’t leave him feeling vulnerable, even essentially naked. He should, something inside him whispers, have taken his chances with the madman. At least his game is simple. Ken knows the rules; kill or be killed. There is an eloquent simplicity about a fight to the death. What does he know of this?

(He’s still gonna kill you, Hidaka. God knows what he’ll do to you before he deigns to let you die and all he’ll do to Youji is lay off him for a while— but if it buys Youji time…)

So he complies. Grudgingly, he acquiesces with Schuldig’s demand even though to do so is to commit a showy kind of suicide. Without the heavy gauntlets his hands feel small and pale and bare; they are only unremarkable after all. The realization surprises him. He doesn’t feel he has any right to claim normality, for all it may be only apparent, but maybe normal is all he is now. It feels, in a weird kind of way, as if he had discarded Siberian with the bugnuks. Where does that leave Ken?

The only thing Ken can think to do about his apprehension, his – why not admit it? – fear is to try, and try hopelessly, to hide it. He seeks refuge in anger, finding reassurance in its familiar patterns. Anger is an old and heavy coat, familiar to the point of banality but comforting all the same. The gun he scrupulously blanks, pretending he hasn’t even noticed it. The too-categorical nature of Ken's defiance is enough to betray the pretense for what it is. Are you scared, Ken? Schuldig’s disdainful smile asks. Do I frighten you?

No. No, you don’t – and Ken can’t make himself believe it. He is frightened, and it is fear of the unknown as much as it is fear of Schuldig, and nothing for him to do about it but deny it. Pretend that he isn’t— but he _is_ frightened, and he is sure Schuldig knows it.

“What now?” He asks, and wishes he hadn’t spoken the minute the words are out. His voice, at least, still sounds normal enough. It’s a victory of sorts, though he wishes he hadn’t spoken at all.  
Schuldig doesn’t reply at first. He says only, “Get up, Ken. Oh, and lose the jacket.”

It surprises Ken when he merely complies, shrugging off his jacket and letting it drop clumsy to the floor, landing at his feet with a soft, heavy thump. He steps away from the clumsy puddle of leather when a single preemptory gesture suggests he should. He is cold, his hands feel useless; absurdly, he catches himself wondering if he should place them on the back of his head. A cinematic kind of gesture. It worries him how easy submission is coming. Siberian is forgotten, he leaves Weiss behind: he is only Ken Hidaka, three years younger and almost painfully innocent, led by the hand into a reality whose existence he couldn’t even have dreamt of by a man whom, even now, he can only love though he is dead and perfidious. The muzzle of the gun – he can’t ignore it after all – singles out one of his eyes, promising an early end to the game should he decide to try and bolt, to break the rules.

Ken wonders if Schuldig plans to shoot him, only to realize that would be far too easy. It isn’t a comforting thought.

Schuldig doesn’t trust him. It’s the way it should be. Ken tells himself he isn’t gratified when the man seizes his upper arm, presses the gun hard against his ribs as he leads him over to the center of the room. It’s strangely flattering to realize that, even under these circumstances, the Schwarz isn’t underestimating him. Confident Schuldig may be, but for now at least he is not arrogant. He isn’t so sanguine as to assume he would have Ken's co-operation regardless. Only fear constrains him and it isn’t even fear for himself – God, I don’t care what it takes, just don’t let him kill Youji. Please. Lose the advantage and, or so Schuldig has good cause to suspect, he’ll lose his grip with it: Ken won’t play the game without good reason, and Schuldig likes Ken where he is.

He reaches in his pocket; now Schuldig holds something in his free hand. Ken strains to see what it is. That Schuldig lets him, raising his hand so that he can get a better view, tells Ken that for whatever reason Schuldig wants him to know he has it. He likes Ken uncertain but there are times when uncertainty isn’t quite sweet enough. Sometimes he likes his prey to see the snare for what it is and, atypically obedient, Ken plays into his hands. He couldn’t have scripted it any neater. Ken will fall, and nothing to catch him when he does.

“When did you take that?” Surprise forces Ken out of silence. The look in his eyes suggests understated fear. But Schuldig says nothing and Ken understands that he needs to stop asking questions which will never be answered.

Schuldig must have worked so fast. He could be so damned fast… Ken feels sick.

 _Checkmate_. You lose. Schuldig has Youji’s wristwatch. He has them both injured, both unarmed… somewhere across the room Ken thinks he hears Youji stir, but even should that be anything but wishful thinking what difference will it make? Youji has been shot. He, they are both trapped. What the Hell does Schuldig want with Youji’s watch, for Christ’s sake— but Ken knows, he can guess, and he winces and hates himself for the display of weakness. He doesn’t like where this is going. I want to go home, he thinks hopelessly, and knows it isn’t even worth wishing it. He knows there is nothing he can do, no way out and he hates it, hates his helplessness. Oh God, oh God can he even remember how to pray?

They stand beneath the filigree of the catwalk and the intricate tracery of girders that run its length, holding it suspended. Ken stifles a yelp, struggling against the sharp tug of premonitory fear as Schuldig grabs his wrists and, catching the both of them in one slender hand, drags him forward. His grasp is painful. The gun grazes against Ken's side. He is snared on Schuldig’s eyes. Lips slightly parted, eyes full of soft apprehension, he watches Schuldig’s face. He can’t look away, can’t ever look away; Ken feels as if he’s been entranced or, maybe, drugged. He doesn’t hear Schuldig fumbling with the release that frees Youji’s wire from the watch it hides in. The sudden bite of pain as it cuts into his wrists breaks the spell.

Don’t struggle, Schuldig whispers, or he might perhaps have only thought it. You’ll only make things worse, Kenken.

(Please, _please_ don’t call me that. It’s not right. God damn it, it’s just not _right_ from your lips…)

He starts. Tries, instinctively, to pull free. Hisses softly in understated pain as Schuldig yanks his bound hands above his head and somehow – he knows he’ll never be sure quite how the man accomplished it – secures the wire to one of the girders that so ensnare the side of the catwalk. The wound in his side, pulled open by position, grumbles in protest. A single tentative tug against his bonds is enough to tell Ken how fast they are. He doesn’t know why he’d expected anything less. Hope? The wire, deceptively fine and fragile-looking, cobwebs his forearms and gnaws at his pinned wrists. It looks like snapping it should be no effort at all. It lies. Don’t struggle.

Ken feels a droplet of blood, just one, begin a slow insect crawl way down the sensitive skin of his inner arm, and he shivers.

He wishes he were different. That he had more composure. Aya would give Schuldig nothing; what of him? You’re far too open, Siberian, Manx had said reproachfully once upon a time, and all he had done was smile in helpless contrition. What could he do about his face, his eyes? His eyes are wide, expressive, a betrayal. His face is too frank, leaving emotion exposed. He is candid, a danger, he doesn’t know how else to be. Doesn’t know how to change or he would have. _You’re such a child, Ken_. And nowhere for him to hide. It is much too late for him to learn control.

Ken's eyes are all the clue Schuldig needs to find out what he is thinking; he need look no further than that. His mind isn’t what interests Schuldig. He is far more attracted by the faint stirrings he can detect, tucked away somewhere to the back of his own awareness, that tell him Youji is dragging his slow, painful way back to consciousness. They have a soft feeling, those thoughts, they are warm and languid as those of a man waking from pleasant dreams – Schuldig waits; he knows that all that gentle hesitancy of attention implies is the few brief and blissful moments of zero recall that mark the return to consciousness after sudden and traumatic collapse.

Things are about to get interesting.

(For Siberian was only ever convenient.)

Reality is staking its claim on Balinese. Schuldig watches with a certain anticipatory delight as Youji stirs, raising his head. His hair is tumbled across his face. Just for a moment his eyes are dazed, even dreamy— hard focus snaps back into them as recent memory floods back, so fast and decisive that Schuldig imagines the young man will be pulled under. At first Youji says nothing, only trying to push himself purposefully back to his feet but agony constrains him; two of Schuldig’s shots hit home and for all they are not grave, were in fact never intended to be anything of the sort, his injuries debilitate him. He collapses at the top of the shallow flight of stairs, the railings that flank the balustrade catching him, breaking his fall when they dig into his uninjured side. He struggles to hold himself upright, one hand grasping the railings for support. Pain has Youji trapped where he has fallen surely as the wire round his wrists restrains Ken. It is exactly what the Schwarz intended.

He remembers the shots. Remembers reaching for the coiled, sleeping wire and sudden pain spreading from his thigh and abdomen before his fingers could close round the release, and stumbling. Falling backwards. It seemed, and how peculiar the thought felt, as if it really had happened in slow motion. He must, he realizes, have struck his head against the wall. Youji knows he is lucky not to be dead already. He can’t quite imagine why he isn’t.

Ken's sudden presence is a complication and a frightening one. Without his jacket and gauntlets Ken seems abruptly half-dressed, as if he left home in indecent haste and little more than half-prepared. Without them he looks like nothing very much, far from dangerous and far too young; he is nineteen. Stood like that, hands over his head and back slightly arched, he looks as if he has been caught in the middle of a stretch. At first Youji can’t understand why Ken would be standing so oddly only to realize, as his blurred vision clears like condensation melting from a pane of heated glass, that his hands are tied. The wire that binds them sparkles faintly and malevolently in the half-light, droplets of radiance glistening along its length like dewdrops on cobweb. It takes only a moment for Youji to realize his watch is missing. And Ken is looking right at him and, oh Christ, his eyes hold nothing but a desperate apology.

He understands now. He’d been even stupider than he’d thought. Ken’s hands are going numb, and he flexes his fingers slightly in the hope of coaxing back sensation. The wire slowly tears into his forearms.

“Nice to see you’re back with us,” Schuldig says, regarding Youji over one banked shoulder. An insubordinate hank of hair falls over one of his narrow eyes, like a half-drawn curtain; a negligent, practiced toss of the head and it slips clear. It’s like opening a blind and staring into a tropical storm, something terrible and elemental and far beyond morality.  
Youji doesn’t look at him. He doesn’t speak to him. He says only, “What’s the deal here, Ken?” He looks as if Schuldig has struck him but Schuldig isn’t what matters; his eyes are angry, but they are trapped in a face shock has rendered almost expressionless. How did this happen, what’s going on, what the Hell are you _doing_?

Ken tries to speak, to say something, anything, in reply, but the words stick in his throat and they just won’t come. He wants to reassure Youji, somehow, but all he can manage is to give him a shaky smile which doesn’t engage his eyes and is no reassurance at all. He hates the eloquent betrayal of his indiscreet eyes. He wants to say, don’t worry about me. Wants to tell Youji that all this will be okay, somehow – Ken wants to lift his weight off Youji’s shoulders but he can’t. He can’t lie and make it sound convincing. If he can’t make a lie the truth in his eyes what point is there in practicing deception?

He can’t believe they will be okay. Not when Schuldig plans to kill him, and wants Youji to watch.

Schuldig notices Ken's distraction. Indifferently, with just a hint of negligent brutality, he grabs the boy beneath the chin, angling his head toward him. “No,” he says, as if he is scolding a disobedient child, “at me, Ken.” But he isn’t looking at Ken. His attention is all on Youji.  
Youji bridles. Let go of him, he thinks furiously. “What do you want with him?” Somehow it is a demand.  
“We’ve come to an agreement,” Schuldig says with a smile. His fingers, where they hold Ken's jaw, dig into his flesh. The grip is easily hard enough to hurt. Only an effort of will keeps Ken from flinching. “He wanted you to live.”

It seems a very small thing for Ken to have wanted, and far from worth the price he is due to pay.

Ken has become hyper-aware of his own breathing. Drawing breath suddenly feels a strange thing to have to do, as if there were something flatly unnatural and almost perverse about the idea of inhalation even at the best of times. It’s funny, he thinks, how when he starts realizing he is breathing it seems impossible to imagine he’ll ever be able to do it unthinkingly ever again. As if, when he allows himself to stop thinking about it, he will suffocate. He knows it isn’t true. It feels true, though.

Ken remembers someone telling him (and he thinks it was Kase but he’s not sure; in memory his childhood is all Kase, so much so that Kase feels like the only friend he ever possessed though Ken had, in truth, always been popular enough) that it was impossible to commit suicide by holding your breath. When you pass out, they, he had said, you immediately start breathing again. It’s harder to die than you think— it probably _was_ Kase who’d told him that; he had long been aware that his friend positively enjoyed anxiously flirting with the shadows. What Ken hadn’t used to do was imagine it meant anything. Kids, he knows, have far darker minds than adults ever give them credit for and there had always been something vaguely morbid about Kase, as if God had designed him to die young.

Killing him was the hardest thing Ken had ever done, but Kase died easy enough for all that.

His mind is running wild on him. He’s not even surprised; it’s happened before. Ken knows it for little more than a silly kind of denial. He doesn’t want to think about his situation so he tries, and tries desperately, to think of nothing at all. It isn’t working. He can’t fight back that awareness. In over his head, Ken knows he’s going under and nothing to do about it but wait and see if he is to be drowned or spared. He got himself into this; why can’t he get out again?

Ken doesn’t want to die.

What he wants is scarcely relevant.


	3. Sacrament

Schuldig catches the drifting threads of Ken's thoughts and lets them brush lightly against his own though sheer force of habit, but the unsophisticated, linear cast of the boy’s mind does not appeal to him. Ken is an uninteresting diversion, his thoughts all too commonplace; Schuldig is too used to constrained fear to find it inspiring. They all think like that; though the particulars may be different the story Ken is whispering to him remains the same. Prosaic. He wants rather more from Weiss than Ken is imparting and, momentarily, allows himself to feel rather let down. He lets Ken's mind go. The other is proving far more appealing.

The presence of the third party, he can tell, will be stimulating. Youji’s mind is curvilinear, his thoughts possess a surprisingly sinuous quality. Though his mind is clouded with pain, Youji’s fear and grief and frustrated rage remain seductive. There is an edge to his anxiety, too, which Schuldig hadn’t been anticipating – something normally kept well hidden in the back doubles of the brain has slipped its leash and started to wander. It seeps through the young man’s mind like smoke and, like smoke, it stains and taints everything it touches.

Comprehension isn’t long in coming to Schuldig and, when he grasps the import of that soft, twisting tainting, he smiles ferociously. He perceives its meaning for all Youji has scrupulously refused to let himself do anything of the sort, and he runs his thumb along the swell of Ken's lower lip, letting his free hand slip beneath the hem of Ken's top and trace its ticklish way along the planes of his abdomen. Ken twists in his grasp, trying to pull away and hissing softly in discreet pain as Schuldig rakes his nails across his chest: Youji’s internalized wince is almost as appreciable.

“Let _go_ , you sick _bastard_!” Ken snaps. He hates the way panic insinuates itself into his voice.  
“Get off him.” Youji tries to pull himself to his feet again but pain traps him just as surely as if Schuldig had seized him by the lapels and forced him back to the floor. Jesus Christ, he is thinking, why you, Ken? Of all the people who could have walked in on this, why did it have to be Ken? Grasping for hope, he casts wildly about himself for his comm. only to discover it lying shattered a few feet away. Fuck. Oh, fuck.  
“I don’t want to,” Schuldig says reasonably. “What are you going to do about it?” What _can_ you do about it?  
Another slap to the face. Youji, though he wants to recoil, holds his ground; he is, he knows, just as trapped as Ken is. Pain only reinforces his helplessness and all Youji can do is ignore it. “If you hurt him, Schuldig,” he says dangerously, and the assertion sounds hopelessly pathetic though he looks and sounds furious, and he means every word, “I’ll kill you.”  
Schuldig merely laughs. “Promise?”

Youji stares at him. His look is pure poison, promising a world of agony should Schuldig prove so stupid as to come within his reach. He is livid. He wants to grab Ken by the arm and punch him, then lead him away from here where he has no right to be. Take him home. He’s just a kid, for fuck’s sake! Youji doesn’t think he has ever wanted anything so much as he wants to see Ken safe now. He is angry and guilty and, oh God, he is frightened – he knows Ken too well.

It has never occurred to Ken to consider himself irreplaceable. Always one of many, he holds his life lightly. Youji knows all too well that he wouldn’t think twice about sacrificing himself if in so doing he would save a friend…

It doesn’t surprise Ken when Schuldig unties the shirt at his waist and tosses it negligently away, but he tenses when the man reaches for the hem of his top. Ken's tee-shirt is torn already; the shot he took in the side has seen to that. Though he struggles and tries to lash out it proves only too simple for Schuldig to tear it unceremoniously off and cast the ripped, dead thing to the floor. The cold makes him gasp. He feels exposed and when he gazes at Schuldig (the man isn’t looking at him; he barely seems to exist for Schuldig) the look in his eyes is an admixture of resentment and fright and discomfiture. He doesn’t know how he should be feeling.

Ken blushes, and conscientiously gazes at nothing at all, and tries to pretend he is alone.

He doesn’t get away with it for long. Schuldig, though he doesn’t take his own eyes from Youji’s for more than a moment, has an uncanny talent for knowing when Ken’s attention is wandering. He understands it for a desperate attempt to shore up failing defenses. He knows the boy is playing games with denial, and he disapproves. He has, he thinks, drawn this out long enough. When Schuldig glances at Ken it is only for confirmation of what he already knows. He sighs. Shakes his head. Ken never sees the blow coming.

The punch snaps Ken's head back; it nearly knocks him from his feet. Only the wire that binds his wrists keeps him from falling. He chokes back a yelp as his own weight has it suddenly biting into his forearms and he fights to regain his footing, ease the pain. Droplets of blood cling to the wire looking for all the world like beads strung upon a bracelet and Schuldig’s fingers knot themselves into Ken's hair as he roughly yanks the boy’s head up, forcing him to meet his eyes. Ken scowls at him but his own eyes are now nothing but fearful. He can taste blood on his lips.

“No. Look at _me_ , Ken,” Schuldig says brusquely. Then his own interest slips, again, from Ken; he turns, smiles lazily at Youji. “Does he always have this much difficulty following orders?”

Youji says nothing, but his silence is furious. He is disgusted with Schuldig. Disgusted, too, that all he is doing is watching; his mind rails at him, demanding action, exhorting him to spring on the Schwarz, wrap his hands around his hateful throat and slowly choke the life from him, but the body is treacherous and refuses to comply. Youji’s arms are clasped across his abdomen, pressing against the soft, sure pulsing of his own blissfully liberated blood as it seeps soft and steady between his fingers; his leg throbs, a rivulet of blood traces its way down his thigh. The entire limb feels numb and foreign. It hardly feels like his leg at all.

He wants to turn away. He tells himself nothing will happen if he turns away, that all he has to do is refuse to watch and Schuldig will stop. Where would the fun be without an audience? He closes his eyes and pretends, pretends he is miles away and this isn’t happening, and somewhere in the shadows Asuka smiles and presses a kiss to his cheek and makes as if to flee… even then Youji could never have been worthy of Asuka’s sacrifice. He certainly isn’t worthy of Ken's. He wanted you to live. And you, Ken? Don’t you think _I_ want _you_ to live?

(God damn it, Ken, not you too!)

Like a cracked record, life spins back on itself: the needle catches in the groove, the phrase repeats itself over and over and over until, contextless, all sense is bled from it. Ken always did have familiar ways.

“Now don’t you start,” Schuldig says warningly, and there is no mistaking the threat in his voice. He doesn’t need to punctuate his remark by raking his nails down Ken's back, scoring an ugly pattern of raised red welts across already scarred skin, but he does. Youji feels a perverse kind of pride in his friend when Ken refuses to react.

Which is of course no good at all. Schuldig needs Ken responsive. What he refused to give freely would have to be seized by force. Ken obviously hadn’t let himself realize quite what he had consented to. High time, Schuldig thinks, that he did and, just for a moment, he regrets Farfarello’s absence. This situation would, he knows, have stimulated his teammate just as much as it does him. Farfarello would have been prepared for this. He, regrettably, is not; the wire is gone, his own gun no use at all, he has no interest in Siberian’s clumsy weaponry – nothing for it but to improvise. Smiling, he slips off his belt.

Ken pretends indifference only because indifference is safe. He tells himself this means nothing and he isn’t afraid because maybe, just maybe if he keeps telling himself that, it will be true after all. He doesn’t even allow Schuldig the momentary satisfaction of anticipatory fear. He merely closes his eyes (he is tired of their betrayal) grits his teeth and tenses – is that right? would it make more sense to try to yield to it? – bracing himself.

It hurts just the same when Schuldig strikes him.

Pain is elusive. You can prepare yourself but you can’t ever prepare, not really. The human mind never can truly recall what it is to suffer. Ken's head snaps up at the first blow, his eyes opening briefly as he bites back a yelp. After that he makes no sound, biting his lip to stifle a scream, to force it back inside – this is nothing, he can’t break already, he’ll need to scream so much more later – though the pain continues just the same. He struggles to ignore it. What’s pain? Pain, or so Ken tells himself, is nothing he can’t handle. He has to handle it. He wants to die well.

Schuldig is only professional. He takes no pleasure in the beating for its own sake; he is, again, too used to it. Ken's back is already scored with welts, slowly running blood where the buckle of the belt has scythed through already damaged skin. He strikes again, the belt cracking heavily as it tears the air in two.

Finally Ken gasps and it is no relief at all. He allows himself that small lapse only because it is better than crying out and Youji flinches at that single soft sound, hissing in sympathetic pain. Schuldig steps back a pace, regarding the emotions that mark his face with the air of a connoisseur. Youji’s reactions – his desperate empathy, his rage, his grief, his fear – are far more interesting than those of the boy he is torturing. Ken is candid, unconflicted; he only hurts. The blonde’s hands grasp the railing he leans against so tightly it is as if he means to snap them in two. He is tense, preparing for a confrontation he has to know will never come. His eyes, normally only languid, are a study in fury.

“Jesus,” Youji hisses viciously, and even he doesn’t know why he speaks. “Jesus _Christ_.”

Schuldig smiles at him, and carries on.

An unmarked length of time later – less than a minute may have passed, or it may have been as many as five; Youji long ago stopped counting, stopped caring – and Ken nearly loses his footing again, stumbling and very nearly pitching forward. The sudden pain as the wire tears into his wrists brings him up short and he forces himself back upright. Unsteady now, his head held low, Ken holds himself like a man battling pain. His eyes, when he opens them, are dazed. Reaction, Youji realizes, is setting in. Schuldig steps forward, letting the bloody belt slip from his fingers and to the floor where, serpentine, it coils up on itself. Idly, as if he barely realizes he is doing it, he runs his slender fingers along the abused skin of Ken's back and smirks when Ken instinctively tenses.

“I know you’re frightened,” he murmurs; a soft, seductive thing, that whisper. Youji has to strain to catch it though he knows Schuldig intends for him to overhear. “I know you’re hurting. Stop pretending otherwise. This would be so much easier if you’d let yourself give in.”  
At first Youji thinks Ken isn’t going to answer but he raises his head, searching for Schuldig’s face. “Fuck you. I'm not pretending.” His voice is barely louder than Schuldig’s, and his pain bleeds subtly into it.  
“Oh, no?” Schuldig asks scornfully. “Do you really think you can hide from a telepath, Kenken?” He can feel Youji’s gaze upon him, the both of them. Don’t touch him! Oh, and the simplicity of it all… the starkly possessive edge to Youji’s fury delights him. “What’s the matter? Jealous?”  
“Go to Hell, Schwarz,” Youji retorts, his voice curt and furious, and knows he is hiding nothing.  
Ken tries to slip back into stubborn silence. He shies away when, once again, Schuldig snatches for his chin, angling his head back toward him. This time the redhead’s touch is perversely gentle, and it hurts. He doesn’t mean to speak. “God… why are you doing this?” He sounds plaintive, frightened, he sounds like a child.  
Of course Schuldig knows what he is really asking. Why not just kill me? “Because that, Ken, would be far too easy.”

He traces his fingers around the edges of the scars that veil Ken's back, still easily discernable under the raised and bloody weals scored across it. He understands their import, and nods almost imperceptibly. Youji draws breath to cry out a warning. Nothing he can do to stop him but if Ken is at least prepared— Schuldig is faster.

Ken recoils when Schuldig’s lighter snaps into life bare inches from his face. With a single violent motion he pulls free of the man’s grasp, ignoring the pain the action costs him, and nearly, _nearly_ , screams. Schuldig, prepared for it, grabs him by the back of the head, yanking Ken back toward him and forcing him to stand still. He doesn’t lower the lighter. The flame flickers and dances and Ken closes his eyes and tries to avert his head. Mary Mother of God not again, I can’t go through that again, I just can’t… He almost forgets to care what Schuldig might think of him for it. Even with his eyes closed Ken can still feel the heat on his cheek. That bastard, he thinks feverishly, that twisted bastard!

But what are phobias and fears if not tools to be used against oneself? Schuldig comprehends everything. He knows how Ken used to start when Youji lit his cigarettes, if he didn’t catch himself; how he still turns away from open fires, stays far enough from the flames that he feels their heat only incidentally, understands his inability to differentiate between fire that warms and that which does nothing but burn. Even in the field he can only ever pretend indifference—

Schuldig simply watches. Impossible to tell what he might be thinking. Youji wouldn’t even like to hazard a guess as to what he has planned – is this purely psychological? He allows himself to hope that it might be but that hope lasts only moments, only until Schuldig takes and lights a cigarette. Letting the lighter burn as if he has merely forgotten about it, he takes a slow, languid drag on the cigarette for all the world like he were lingering over a lazy Sunday-morning cup of coffee. “You don’t like fire, do you,” he says matter-of-factly. Ken can tell he isn’t looking for answers. In his own horribly eloquent way he has answered already.  
“Don’t,” Ken hears himself say, and he hates the plea in his voice. It isn’t worth pleading for anything.  
“What kind of an arrangement do you think this is?” Schuldig asks in perfectly feigned surprise. Even the look on his face, Youji thinks, is faultless, a replica so perfect it can hardly be sincere. “No deal, Ken.”

Youji doesn’t see Schuldig move, but he hears Ken scream.

Schuldig steps back slightly, flicking the spent cigarette casually to the floor, his smile that of a scientist who sees his own hypothesis successfully proved. Ken is vague-eyed and horrified, looking right at Youji without once comprehending what he is seeing. Seeing something completely different, something years old which still haunts him and which, with the stimulus of all-too-familiar pain, has grabbed him by the shoulders and shaken him into terrified submission. That look tears Youji in two. Youji wants nothing but to take Ken in his arms and hold him. Take his pain away.

And it is a fantasy. Impossible even to think it.

“You’re sick,” he spits. The look in his eyes says Schuldig has signed his own death warrant. Furious, and single-minded in his fury, Youji Kudou is not a man to cross lightly. He makes a dangerous enemy. Maybe Schuldig doesn’t realize it; maybe he just doesn’t care. All that matters is the moment and for now at least Youji can do nothing. He can hate him, but he can do nothing about it. His frustration is seductive.  
“So I’ve been told.” Schuldig’s indifference says this is nothing new. It doesn’t matter; Ken is only more of the same. Lightly, gently, he runs one hand up the boy’s side, twists his fingers in his hair and yanks his head back, exposing his throat. “That’s cute, Weiss. Real cute. But I really wouldn’t have thought _he_ —” flatly contemptuous, that single word, “—was your type.”  
Youji starts. His fingers tense around the railings which support his body. “What’s that got to do with anything? Let him go!”  
“Don’t be stupid. Why would I want to do a thing like that?”

Schuldig turns away from Youji, erasing him with a single contemptuous frown in favor of gazing contemplatively at Ken as if he is some kind of puzzle that needs to be solved. He studies Ken’s closed eyes, the flatly artificial arch to his exposed and vulnerable throat, the subtle rise of his bare chest as he draws breath, as if he is wondering what to do with him; the boy shifts his weight slightly, desperately and futilely trying to ease the pain and he makes, without ever once meaning to do anything of the sort, a small soft sound, midway between a gasp and a whimper. Schuldig’s eyes narrow slightly as an obscene, even carnal calculation creeps slowly over his face.

Oh, God. Youji stares at him, at them, furious horror slyly insinuating itself into his eyes. Oh, dear God, no. He struggles to regain his footing, dragging himself up using the railings and standing, leaning heavily against them and grimacing with hard-repressed pain. Has to move. _Has_ to…

Two paces and his leg gives way, the torn and ravaged tissue refusing to support his weight and spilling him from his feet. Losing his footing, Youji slumps over and slides down the shallow stairs, landing heavily and awkwardly to lie at their foot, his coat twisted up beneath him. He can’t help feeling – incongruously, knowing full well that it is a perverse thing to be worrying about now – it is an undignified thing for him to have done. He pushes himself up again, supporting himself on his forearms; he refuses to lie helpless at Schuldig’s feet. Pride at its ugly worst, the exact kind of thing Ken would have laughed at him for if this had been a normal situation, if everything was okay. Youji feels a gout of blood rush warm and sticky down the side of his thigh; he has done nothing but make matters worse.

He calls Ken's name anyway.


	4. Desecration

Youji sounds frantic and for a moment it leaves Ken, circumstances be damned, feeling nothing but surprised. Thrown. Youji doesn’t lose control. Youji is all languid unconcern, a smiling figure indolently sprawled in a shaft of sunlight, his eyes peering sleepily and uninterestedly out at the world over the dark glasses that have slipped halfway down his nose. He recognizes the panic in his teammate’s voice and, briefly, he opens his eyes, but he can see nothing of any moment. Can’t see Youji at all though he knows he is still there. Is that a comfort or quite the opposite when all it means is being seen? Youji cannot help him. Nobody can help him. God is dead.

“Youji—”

He gets no further, breaking off with a gasp as he feels Schuldig’s hair lightly brushing across his chest and shoulders when he bends toward him. Ken twists in his captor’s grasp and tries to pull free, put much-needed space between Schuldig and himself but can’t move far enough, hasn’t got the leverage, he tries to kick but Schuldig isn’t there, isn’t anywhere although he stands over him… the man gives the side of his neck a brief yet agonizing nip and Ken realizes his pain isn’t enough for Schuldig. His death isn’t enough. His eyes go wide as understanding tears through him; it is a gunshot, or the sudden sharp thrust of a knife – a penetration.

“Oh my God.” It’s all Ken can think of to say. He can’t be serious. “Oh God… _stop_ it, you fucking psycho!” Frightened now. Please, don’t let him want what I think he does. Please!  
Schuldig laughs softly into the curve of Ken's neck. “You lose, Kenken,” he says smoothly, raising his head slightly so that he can look into Youji’s eyes. He spares the blonde a single, wicked half-smile before he speaks again. “I thought we had an understanding. You were the one who wanted to save your friend. You agreed to this. Don’t—” his voice becomes a whisper, a soft, menacing thing, “—make me change the terms.”

Ken, preoccupied with Schuldig’s proximity, isn’t paying attention to conversation. He barely hears him, but he catches enough of Schuldig’s words for their import to sink in. But this wasn’t part of the deal! Surely, _surely_ this couldn’t have been part of the deal! Wasn’t death enough of a recompense? Pain he had been expecting. Pain was something he could, ultimately, handle (of course he’d been there before, he was used to it). What was this?

He thinks of – Christ, and he thinks of Manx sitting at, no, on a desk, not much of a teacher, talking flatly to him about… and he can’t recall her words any more. Ken remembers only staring out of the window at the perfect afternoon trapped beyond it, wishing he were out in it and wondering, such a stupid thing to think, whose life is this? Briefings. What the fuck good is a briefing? A woman’s serene voice speaking dispassionately on torture and rape…

Rape. How can he let this happen? How _can_ there be nothing to do, no way to stop it? Ken can’t be sure what’s worse about his situation; Schuldig’s intentions or his own helplessness in the face of them. He’s never been good with inaction.

Ken struggles in Schuldig’s grasp as the redhead snatches at the button of his jeans, and Schuldig gives his hair a savage yank before letting that hand trail perversely lightly down the side of his face, tracing the line of his jaw and down his chest before coming to rest on his abdomen, pinning the boy against him. The buttons of Schuldig’s jacket dig, cold and hard and emphatic, into the torn, abused flesh of his back, and he winces and tries to pull away. There is nowhere to go. He couldn’t have explained why he still endeavors to fight if he were to try for hours. A rivulet of blood surges down one arm. Funny thing, it tickles.

“No,” Ken says desperately as if simply by saying it he could negate the truth. I don’t want this. I never wanted this…  
“No? I wouldn’t push my luck if I were you, kid,” Schuldig says, and his casual tone is nothing but an obscenity. “I could still change my mind about sparing your friend here. You wouldn’t want that to happen now, would you? After you’ve come so far?” Ken says nothing. Schuldig can feel the tension in his muscles. Even with all his attention on the honey-rich turmoil that is Youji’s mind, he fancies he can almost taste Ken's terror. Absently, Schuldig drags his fingernails across the boy’s torso enjoying the way Ken winces and pushes back against his chest, trying to flee from pain, make it hurt less. “I could kill him any time I wanted, Weiss. I could shoot him dead now and that would be the end of it. I might still do it…”  
“Don’t. Please, don’t hurt him,” Ken whispers hopelessly, and Youji stares. No, Ken! That’s not how it works, that’s not how this has to be! How in Hell could he have bargained with _Schuldig_? How could anyone want to throw themselves away for a man like him? Oh, Ken. You bloody fool. God damn the kid, he could be so stupid. So thoughtless. So terribly brave.

It breaks Youji’s heart that Ken hasn’t once looked to him for help. He hasn’t even thought to ask for it. Like it or not Ken sees clearly.

Schuldig nods briskly, a businessman concluding a successful negotiation, quietly gratified by the concessions he has wrung from his counterpart. “Then the arrangement stands.” His gaze drifts back across to Youji and the fury in his trapped eyes and oh, but he could get drunk on the young man’s thoughts.

Ken instinctively resists when Schuldig once again reaches for the button of his pants, tensing and shying away at the first shock of contact before, with almost visible effort, calming himself. Superficially calm. He struggles to control his breathing as Schuldig quickly and unceremoniously strips him of his jeans, his underwear. The whimper he suppresses by biting his lip; nothing he can do about the blush that spreads across his cheeks save wish it weren’t there. The cuffs of his pants get caught on his boots; lose those too. Nothing like doing a job properly. Ken closes his eyes and pretends he isn’t anywhere any more. He pretends he’s dead. He is angry. He isn’t angry enough.

Youji murmurs something. Curse, exclamation, simple statement; Ken doesn’t catch it. He only knows Youji has spoken. Schuldig, though – he must have heard it, or something, because it makes him laugh. Laugh, and rest one hand at the base of his spine. Schuldig is playing. It seems perverse that his hands should be warm, his touch gentle.

“No,” Ken says, and he doesn’t know what he’s denying. I don’t want this. Please, don’t let me cry…  
“No deal, Ken,” Schuldig says softly, his voice seductively dangerous. “I could have killed you. You chose otherwise. Cope with it.”

Truth. It is unbearable, almost. Ken flushes furiously in sheer embarrassment even as the cold – and still he isn’t used to it – makes him flinch. Ken knows this is – nakedness is nothing. Nothing at all. It, he isn’t even anything _new_ to Youji, goddamn it, he’s passed out on the guy enough times before now and it’s not like the others could clean him up without undressing him. He’s done locker rooms, done public baths, never had a problem with them… what’s the problem now?

Context is all; he is humiliated. Degraded. On some level not quite human.

Don’t look at me, Youji. Please don’t look… As if Youji has any more choice in this than he does. As if there’s anything he can do. Oh Christ, he’s going to make him watch I'm sorry, mother of God I'm sorry, I never meant this, I don’t want this, you said you’d leave him alone— you never really believed that did you Ken, where are the others? Don’t let them be dead, they can’t be dead so where _are_ they?

(Help me.)

“ _Ken_!”

Youji’s voice. Then the harsh, dry crack of the gun. Ken cries out, losing his footing and landing heavily on his front, barking shins and elbows when, instinctively, he tries to protect his head. The shot has cleaved the wire that restrains his hands in two. Freedom of sorts, but Ken doesn’t move from where he has fallen. He merely lies still and stares at his numbed, pale hands, his torn and blood-streaked forearms as if he has never seen them before, and struggles to catch his breath, snatching vainly at calm even as he feels it slipping from his fingers. The damp clings to him, he wants to pull away from the clammy floor, wants warmth, will he ever be warm again? Ken shivers. From the cold? He hopes it’s only cold. He can hear movement behind him. Don’t think about that. Don’t think, Ken.

If he raises his head he can just about see Youji. Youji, pale and aghast, his clothing spattered with blood – Ken tells himself it’s shock and blood loss, that Youji needs a doctor, needs to get out of here, _don’t look at me_. Youji who doesn’t know what to do with himself, doesn’t even know how he should be looking. His face is a frightening nothingness. Youji is struggling to rise again, fighting a _fait accompli_ only because he doesn’t know what else to do, because he doesn’t want to admit defeat, because inaction hurts worse than any physical pain.

Ken can’t watch, can’t bear to see his normally collected teammate giving in to dismay. I always fuck things up… What is he doing, what in Hell has he done? Why is it always the simple ones? He closes his eyes.

“Stop it, Schuldig! You’ve made your point!” What’s worse, Youji is wondering frantically, furiously. Who is this worse for? He can’t believe he’s even thinking it. “Leave him be, God _damn_ you!”  
“I’m sorry,” Ken whispers. His words will tear Youji apart. “I'm sorry, Youji.”

And the rasp of fabric on fabric, horribly pointed, horribly loud. Schuldig hooks an arm round his waist, yanking him forcefully to his knees. Ken gasps and tenses all the while knowing it’s wrong, has to relax but _how_? and tries to pull away, feeling Schuldig’s nails digging painfully into the flesh at his hips. Hail Mary full of grace I can’t do this, I can’t just _let_ him do this—

“No!”

Pleading is all Ken can do and it’s not enough. It could never be enough.

There is no other warning. No preliminary, no matter how perfunctory. Just pain, sudden excruciating pain as Schuldig forces his way inside him, and he screams.

( _Help_ me!)

Ken screams. Screams in agony, disbelief, terror, fury or all of them, or none of them, and the desperate, wordless mayhem of his scream sticks in his throat, is torn in two by a single sharp gasp. It hurts so badly he can hardly breathe, pain and Schuldig tear him apart and he twists in his assailant’s grasp (do something, Ken, do _anything_ , anything at all you can’t let him do this to you call yourself a man holy Mary mother of God make it stop hurting, I can’t do it, can’t do it I just can’t _stand_ this it hurts Christ it hurts please God mother Youji anybody help me make him _stop_!) but the Schwarz isn’t giving an inch, he holds him fast. Ken wants to collapse and he can’t, can’t move, can barely even think through the pain and the gathering haze of shock and the terrible, calculating humiliation of it all.

Youji is shouting something now, but it means nothing to Ken. A thread of sound, barely audible over his own screams and no more relevant. He doesn’t hear the catch to Youji’s voice, wouldn’t have believed it was there even if he had. Ken cannot see the way Schuldig, bent over his back, lifts his head to smile at Youji from behind a fall of hair. To smile, and his smile is triumphant. Youji’s thoughts flood his mind, mingling gloriously with his own, a study in contrasts; somewhere on the edge of everything the grace-note of Ken's distress, a fragrance barely smelt but heady and unmistakable nonetheless.

Schuldig tangles his fingers in the boy’s hair and, negligent, brutal, yanks his head up forcing an artificial arch to his neck, a painful curve to his back. Difficult for Ken to catch his breath when breathing is a sharp, ragged thing, when every inhalation is searing and shallow and his tears half choke him. The hanging ends of Schuldig’s hair trail across his shoulders and back, the nails of one of his hands dig into his abdomen, he is buried deep inside him, moving smooth and mechanical and savage, he isn’t even looking at him. Still Schuldig watches Youji, still he is smiling. Turn away. I dare you.

Youji guesses the import of that smile and it horrifies him. It leaves him chilled and shaken and furious, absolutely furious to consider how little this means. It was him, he realizes. Only him, always. He’s the constant. Ken could have been anyone, so _why him_? Youji can’t tear his eyes from Schuldig’s face. He can’t even imagine what look the redhead might find on his own. He wants to cry but what good will that do either of them? He tries to close his eyes but he can’t shut out Ken's screams. Not to see is worse. Not to see feels like shame.

This, Youji knew, was what would hurt him the most. Not Ken’s violation, but his own furious helplessness in the face of it. His reluctant voyeurism, turning him into a co-conspirator in his best friend's rape. Schuldig had made it into a spectacle.

Oh God, Ken. Not you, not you too! I’m not worth it, kid… I was never worth this!

A necessarily silent shriek.

Ken cannot think. He screams – pain, only pain – and barely realizes it, barely recognizes the sound of his own voice. Barely recognizes anything. A quiet room, a hot day, the composed, clipped cadences of Manx’s words: it’s nothing but bullshit. All the world is Schuldig and pain and something in his head that feels like a prayer. After a while he realizes he is crying. After a while he realizes he isn’t screaming any more. After a while it all becomes extraneous and Ken surrenders to the sanctuary of shock, gratefully losing himself in it.

And time becomes a quiet irrelevance. He doesn’t know how much longer it lasts, none of them do. Schuldig climaxes with a jerk of the hips and a sinuous shudder and even at that moment of hideous transport his eyes are on Youji’s. He withdraws quickly, roughly pushes Ken to the floor with a single abrupt motion before getting to his feet, turning all his attention to scrupulously tidying his disheveled clothing. Leave no trace. It is as if, Youji notices with a certain detached horror, Schuldig can barely wait to get away from Ken.

Ken lies face-down where he has fallen, his bound hands before him. It would almost be easier for Youji to bear if he were still crying but aside from his ragged breathing he lies silent. A bad sign. His bare shoulders shake as, exhausted, he fights to catch his breath. Youji can’t look at him without feeling guilty and ashamed. This should never have happened, not to Ken; what can he do now it has?

(And still all he wants to do is hold him.)

Schuldig grins, making a few final adjustments to the hang of his jacket. Obscenely elegant, out of step with his macabre surroundings, he lights a languid cigarette with a casual flourish. “You’re not missing much, Weiss.”  
“You fucking disgust me,” Youji says viciously, but his voice trembles. “Why him?”  
Schuldig quirks one eyebrow, as if surprised Youji should prove so unbearably naïve. He says only, “Whyever not?”  
“Don’t think this is over, Schuldig,” Youji says, spitting the Schwarz’s chosen name at him like it were nothing but a curse, but for all his fury and loathing, for all he means every last word, the assertion sounds only pathetic. Hopeless. It sounds like nothing more than an impossible fantasy designed only to shore up the ruins of self-respect. “I’ll have your life for this!” No matter how long it takes, he promises himself – he promises Ken – Schuldig will pay.

The cold is the only thing Ken comprehends. He hardly notices when Schuldig steps away from him. He is frightened and torn and agonized; he hates Schuldig with all he has; he would break down and weep if he could only find the strength, but more than any of that he is numb. Nothing matters. He can’t even find it in himself to care whether he lives or dies when both prospects seem equally unenviable. Slowly, his abused and aching body wracked with uncontrollable shivering, Ken curls up on his side and draws in on himself, in flight from the unbearable cold. His eyes are half open and vacant as a daydreamer’s, fixed on an unremarkable spot on one of the stained walls. He sees nothing. He doesn’t move again.

Something in Ken has already broken, and it has broken irrevocably. He crouches naked amongst the shards, palms and legs cut to ribbons, bleeding and weeping as he tries to pick up the pieces…

Survival hurts worse than death, sometimes.

Which is why Schuldig lets Ken live.


	5. Sacrament

The slam of the door is a subtle anticlimax.

Schuldig should have left like thunder. Strange that he should just smile and turn and walk away as if it didn’t matter after all, hands in his pockets and the cigarette burning, half-forgotten, between his lips. He says nothing more, doesn’t even look back. Youji hardly knows why he should have expected him to. What did any of it ever mean to Schuldig? Give the Schwarz a week and he’ll almost have forgotten tonight: give Ken a lifetime and he’ll never manage that. Nor, Youji knows, will he.

I’m going to kill Schuldig, Youji thinks, and the thought is a curious kind of comfort, like huddling under the blankets when down with the flu. It hardly helps, it doesn’t change a thing, but it’s a comfort all the same. I’m going to goddamn kill him, and I'm going to smile. Do you know that, Ken?

“Ken?” Quietly, even experimentally, he calls his friend’s name. “Hey, Kenken?”

I'm sorry. Youji isn’t surprised to get no response. He had never expected one— are you all right, Ken?

Not a bit of it. Frowning Youji turns from the door, forces himself to look back at his friend (your fault: Youji knows it and wants to turn away but, a penitent, doesn’t) and he flinches sympathetically at the sight of him. Ken’s back is a nightmare of bruising and torn tissue; blood and semen spatter his thighs. He shivers, he is cold. His presence is an unsubtle indictment, his condition a damning verification of Youji’s own culpability. Ken wanted you to live.

Selfishly, he catches himself wishing Ken were furious, or weeping, or screaming – anything as long as it wasn’t this, wasn’t the total, scrupulous nothingness of deep and overwhelming shock. His continued silence is worse than anything Youji could have imagined though Ken’s shock, he knows, is under the circumstances nothing to be wished away. With any luck shock would be keeping him from the worst of his pain and would do so at least until they got out of here and could do something about it. Better Ken feels nothing than that he is in agony. He’d been hurt enough already.

“Okay,” Youji says softly to the empty air. “ _Okay_.”

His own half-forgotten wounds tug at him with forceful hands, demanding as discontented children resentful of his determined inattention, but Youji forces pain back, pushes it brusquely aside. He feels, he realizes, lightheaded, strange, his fingers feel cold and his mouth desperately dry – fundamentally terrible. Christ, how much blood has he lost? Forget it, don’t think about it, he can give in to pain later… it seems to take him a long time to make his agonized, inching way to Ken's side, dragging his near-useless leg behind him. He is barely conscious of the indignity of his advance or of the slippery, malevolent smears of blood that mark his progress and he feels himself start to smile when, reaching out, the tips of his fingers brush lightly against one of Ken's bare shoulders. After that it seems easy.

His vision twists when he sits, his grim little world warping crazily. It feels like drunkenness, as if he’d overdone it at the last bar of the evening and his body were protesting his decision to stagger home rather than waste money he no longer had on a cab. Closing his eyes briefly, Youji rides it out and within seconds unpleasant reality reasserts itself, finding him caught in a gloomy basement by the bound and naked body of the closest friend he possesses, the both of them dazed and bloodied and horrified…

“Oh, _Ken_.” I'm sorry. I’m so sorry.

Almost without realizing he is doing it, Youji brushes a few strands of hair from Ken’s uncomprehending eyes and passes a hand across his brow. Even through the gloves Ken's skin feels cold. Looking down at him – he hasn’t moved, has given absolutely no indication he is aware of Youji’s presence – Youji sees nothing but a vacancy. On some level Ken isn’t there any more. He is unreachable; beyond caring, almost beyond help. Instinct has Youji shrugging off his heavy coat and draping it over Ken, covering him up as best he can before turning his attention to loosening the wire that still cuts into the boy’s sluggishly bleeding wrists.

There is more blood before long. Youji curses under his breath, and leans over and grabs at the fallen shirt Ken usually wore tied around his waist. So, the damned thing turns out to have a purpose after all…

Later, he suspects much later, with Ken lying in his lap – Ken still feels cold, so damned cold and he shivers, and hangs heavy in Youji’s arms as if he were already dead, and stares into the empty air as if it holds something fascinating but the look on his face, unnervingly, is one of strange serenity – Youji wonders apropos of nothing at all, how in Hell are we going to get out of here? So far he has forced himself to ignore pain but he understands only too clearly the hold that debility has on him. Won’t be walking out of here. How long have they been trapped in this place? It feels like hours. It feels like life.

The mission – Youji realizes he has almost forgotten the mission – feels as remote and irrelevant as his schooldays, leaving the flower shop little more than a distant dream, something another man did in another lifetime… their need to flee is desperate and impossible. The plan was to blow the place up, to destroy the evidence – when? When will that be? The others (Weiss being something else that has slipped his mind almost completely; he is only Youji, Ken merely Ken, two unremarkable young men in the wrong place at the wrong time and paying the price for it) he thinks must have left long ago.

Which is why he starts at the sound of footsteps on the stairway, at first barely heard over the endless drip of water and the measured rhythm of his heartbeat but growing louder, clearer, and flinches when Omi cries his name.

“Youji-kun! You… oh my God.”

For a moment Omi looks exasperatedly grateful, his lips parting in preparation for delivering a gentle rebuke only for his blue eyes to grow wide and troubled as he glances around the room. Already there is nowhere for Ken to hide… but what, Youji wonders, about me? Can _I_ hide? Or has Omi already guessed there’s something else wrong here?

(Can Omi guess I was here when Schuldig— does he know Schuldig raped Ken, and made me watch him do it?)

Youji watches as Omi gazes about himself, disturbed by detail, taking in the blood tracked across the floor and smeared on the walls, the scattered clothing all of which he can easily identify as belonging to Ken, the unmoving figure wrapped in Youji’s coat and lying limply in his arms. He can’t quite fathom the purpose of the piece of fine wire (is it Youji’s?) dangling from the catwalk and glittering wanly in the half-light. There is a faint line of moisture, he notices, in the corner of Youji’s eyes though the willowy blonde barely seems to realize it. Five, maybe six breaths and wan, ghostly Aya, half swallowed up by the darkness, appears in the doorway behind him.

“What happened here?” Aya breaks the sudden silence, understated suspicion slipping into his narrow eyes.  
“Schwarz,” Youji manages, and the word seems to stick in his throat. He feels Ken stir uneasily in his arms as his grip on his battered body tightens and Youji pulls him protectively to his chest as if hoping to shelter him from their teammates’ eyes, their well-founded suspicions.  
“And…” Omi – case-hardened, resolute Omi – looks aghast. Aya frowns, his eyes unexpectedly troubled. Brutality strikes home that much harder when it becomes personal; it always does. Youji can guess the conclusion the teenager has come to and wishes he could tell him, no. You’re wrong, Omi. It’s not what it looks like— it’s exactly what it looks like. “And Ken-kun?” It sounds almost as if Omi hardly wants to know the answer. He knows far too much already.  
Youji sighs. “He’s alive,” he says finally. Then, softly, definitely, despairingly, “Just get us out of here.”

Even that is harder than it sounds.

Ken, it is obvious, needs to be carried out. Youji claims he can walk, if helped, but the few inches he has on Aya make it more demanding than it has to be for the redhead, one of Youji’s arms slung across his own shoulders, to get him onto his feet and out of the door.

They have to leave Omi and Ken in the basement at first. Omi, kneeling on the floor by Ken's side holding his disregarded clothing in a bundle, anxiously watches them leave. He doesn’t want to go. He doesn’t want to stay (… he’d played it safe with the fuses on the explosives; the mission had gone badly and everyone makes mistakes and Omi likes living but they should have been gone long ago, how long does that give them now?). Torn between two friends, he hardly knows where to look, let alone who he should be more afraid for…

“But you’ve been _shot_ , Youji-kun…!”  
“Stay with Ken.”

Youji pretends not to mind leaving Ken. Pretends to be exasperated by needing Aya’s help, forcing an unconvincing smile to his lips and repeatedly asserting that he is doing fine; Aya, all grim stoicism, doesn’t contradict him though the determined weight of him pressing across Aya’s shoulders and back and the understated grimace on his face as he struggles to walk tell their own story. The deception is only made clearer when Aya helps Youji into the back seat of his half-hidden car.

Even in the inadequate light cast by a feeble and apologetic urban moon Aya can tell Youji is flatly and unnaturally ashen, his face pinched and scored with the unmistakable marks of hard-repressed agony. Blood on his flank and the forearm he has pressed to it, blood running down the leg of his pants and dripping soundlessly to the car’s floor; exertion has opened the wounds again. Glancing almost without meaning to down to the scarred ground, Aya purses his lips when he notices the bloody rosettes picking out their route. There are painkillers in the dashboard, but giving them to a teammate with an abdominal wound might do more harm than good.

Youji leans heavily and uncomfortably into the seats, head back, breathing harsh and labored. Aya watches as he slowly and deliberately wets his lips. He suspects him of drifting toward circulatory shock, realizes he must have underestimated the extent of Youji’s injuries. Not only that; Youji must have. It must have been sheer tenacity, or fear likewise, that had kept him alert for this long.

Ken lets go, slipping quietly into unconsciousness somewhere between ] basement and car. What else is left to him?

“I’ve got him,” Youji says wearily, opening his eyes and drawing Ken to him.  
“Youji.” Aya says warningly, “Don’t push yourself—”  
“I’ve got Ken.” Youji cuts him off; his voice, though hoarse, is firm. “Just _drive_ , Aya.” And lets his eyes slip closed again.

He misses Aya’s brief frown and the look that he exchanges with the consternated Omi – two moves ahead, always two moves ahead and hating the patterns he sees form on the board – misses the way that apprehension suddenly redoubles in the teenager’s blue eyes. Shivering and abruptly aware of the chill Omi swallows hard, gazing after Aya as the young man turns away and hurries to the front of the car. Only too obvious what was forced upon Ken, but what of Youji?

…Youji-kun, how much did you see?

But he can’t ask that question. It’s not his place to.

There is nothing else to say. The silence seems to linger between them as Omi scrambles into the front seat, snatching for the safety belt as Aya, already behind the wheel, guns the engine and pulls away far too fast. Distantly, but not nearly distant enough for Omi’s comfort, he thinks he hears the rumble of an explosion; he turns to Aya wide-eyed and is reassured by the look of resolution on his teammate’s face. Aya won’t give in now.

The car has reached the highway, the now-burning complex safely behind them, before Omi turns troubled eyes to Aya who, eyes on the road, mind firmly on contingency plans, cover stories and the location of the nearest Kritiker-affiliated hospital, is speeding as he heads back into the lazy late-night city. Why, Omi wonders forlornly, can’t things be normal? why can’t he be dozing in the back, half his mind on the homework he hasn’t yet finished, silently cursing a frustrated and fidgety Ken for his inability to keep still and wishing his teammate had taken his motorbike to the target site instead of catching a lift with Aya?

Aya’s expression, the subtle tightening of his grip on the steering wheel, the set of his jaw as he incautiously overtakes a weaving late-night sedan, probably carrying a drunken, weary salaryman home to his frustrated wife and the children he hasn’t seen awake since Sunday, all suggest anxiety. The air in the car is thick with the unmistakable copper taint of newly-spilt blood. Nothing unusual there yet tonight the smell seems somehow worse, more pernicious, for being the blood of his teammates, not their targets.

“What now?” He can’t believe he’s asking that question, but at least it breaks the heavy silence. “This isn’t the way home…”  
“We’re not going home,” Aya says bluntly. “We’re going to a hospital.”  
A hospital? Omi falls briefly silent, twisting in his seat to glance over his shoulder at the huddled figures of his teammates, then looking warily at Aya out of the corners of his eyes. “It’s… is it really that bad, Aya-kun?” he asks in a very small voice. Peering over Aya’s shoulder into the back of the car as he placed the insensible Ken gently down on the seat, Omi hadn’t really had a chance to get a good look at Youji before the door was closed on him. He couldn’t be that badly hurt, could he? “Can’t we do this ourselves?” We normally get by alone, don’t we?

Why is he asking? Omi doesn’t know. Yes, they normally get by alone, but this isn’t a normal situation.

“No, we can’t,” Aya replies briskly and calmly and why shouldn’t he be calm? He is simply stating the facts. “Youji’s lost too much blood. He needs to see a doctor, Omi.” He needs surgery, but Aya doesn’t say that. He isn’t sure if he holds back for Omi’s sake, or if it’s for Youji’s. He doesn’t like the continued silence from the back.  
“Oh,” Omi says softly; just for a moment, he looks and sounds like the seventeen year old he is supposed to be but the moment passes. “What are we going to tell them, Aya-kun?”  
Aya hesitates for a moment; a stranger might not have picked up on it but to Omi, who knows Aya, his uncertainty is palpable and worrying. “We should leave it to Kritiker,” he says finally, then hisses in frustration and cuts his sudden, sharp way out of lane and across three carriageways, onto the off-ramp he nearly missed.

Omi nods, swallowing hard. Some things it’s simply not possible to explain away. This one needs far more than a hastily-concocted cover story: the implications of bringing a bleeding assassin into the emergency room of a public hospital go far further than that. Handling serious injury has long been a sticking point for Weiss: there’s only so far anyone can go with the kitchen table and a medical kit, and only so many excuses. Far better to leave it to Kritiker to kick over their traces.

Hospitals are inconvenient places to hide. Scrupulously updated, carefully stored patient records will have to fail to be correctly completed or expediently go missing shortly after filing, hospital workers and the occasional inconvenient witness will need bribing or bullying into silence. In the face of the health service’s mania for data collection and record-keeping, far more work will be needed to keep things discreet, stop the awkward questions before they can be asked, than Weiss could manage alone… No, Omi thinks, Manx can do it; it is, after all, what she’s there for. No convenient lie Aya or himself could come up with would be good enough to justify a dazed and bloodied dead man showing up with gunshot wounds. And Ken… what could they ever find to say about what had happened to Ken?

(They can’t rationalize rape.)

“What about Ken-kun?” Omi hears himself say. Aya shoots him a single sharp look from the corners of his eyes. Omi ignores it, refuses to be cowed. “I checked him over while you were helping Youji-kun back and from what I’ve seen he’s not been _that_ badly hurt, physically speaking at least. We can call a doctor ourselves if we have to. And…” he breaks off, sighing and turning to gaze pointedly out of the side window at the hushed, blurred, night-dark streets, “I honestly don’t think a hospital’s going to do him any good at all right now, Aya-kun.”

Hospitals mean doctors mean questions. Omi doesn’t like the thought of walking out and heading back to the _Koneko_ leaving Youji alone in a resus room, surrounded by the unfamiliar faces, little more than half-glimpsed beneath hairnets and hastily-donned surgical masks, of ER personnel as they hurriedly prepare him for emergency surgery, swiftly inserting IV lines, rushing through pre-op checks and calling for rapid-induction anesthesia, but he doesn’t like the thought of handing a plainly distressed Ken over to a skeptical, unsympathetic doctor, a gaggle of incredulously giggling nurses, either. Quite bad enough that they, Weiss, knew what had been forced on him without involving a good dozen hospital staff, a counselor Ken wouldn’t want to talk to now or ever, Manx and _Kritiker_ …

No. Not possible. Easier to let the doctors handle it all but Omi understands this isn’t about what they, Aya and himself, might consider the easier option, or what they think best. It is only about Ken, about what he would have been holding out for had he been able. Omi knows Ken. He knows Ken wouldn’t want a hospital involved if there was any way around it. He wouldn’t want _anyone_ involved who didn’t have a damned good reason to be.

Right now Ken doesn’t need anything a hospital could give him. He only needs to feel safe.

“Ken-kun doesn’t need a hospital,” Omi says, surprised by the determination in his voice. “We’re going to take him home.”


	6. Sanctuary

It is qualitatively different to close your eyes against light than to do it in darkness. Shifting patterns against the retinas, a certain burnished quality to the blackness behind the eyelids, betrays the presence of light on the face.

He has known nothing for – it hardly matters how long. Time is an irrelevance when it passes entirely unheeded. Now, vaguely aware of the light and the sudden return, however tentatively, of sensation, he tries to open his eyes but he can’t. Can’t seem to make himself move. Can’t seem to make himself do anything save breathe, aware only of brightness and cold and sudden unrelieved pain, and wait. Wait. What is he waiting for, for fuck’s sake? What else is there left to give? Sick of waiting. He hopes, hopelessly, that they will at least have the grace to kill him quickly. Remembers—

Someone is carrying him, holding him to their chest: has to be a man, who is this why are they touching him? The contact terrifies him. He wants to protest. Wants to twist in their unbearable grasp and struggle free, demand they get off, let go, don’t _touch_ me, Goddammit! but he can’t make the words come any more than he can push the marauding hands away. He is conscious of a sudden insane need to start screaming and not stop. Don’t, oh God, _don’t_ …

Then voices; simple, unrevealing conversation. Two voices and both familiar but he feels far too hurt and frightened and exhausted to care quite why. Can’t even remember if they belong to friends or enemies.

“No, not on his back, you’ll hurt him!”  
“I know. Stand back, please.”  
“Hang on, you’ll need the sheet turned down…”

And it is just sound. As the man holding him places him gently on his side and steps, thank God! away from him (so they’re probably not enemies), the voices seem to recede, becoming little more than a vague murmuring, like a forgotten radio playing in the room next door when drifting off to sleep. Now he notices the cold again though he understands, however vaguely, that he isn’t quite so cold now as he was before he found himself here, wherever here is. Someone he can’t see draws a heavy blanket up and over him (almost has to be among friends) and, though it hurts where it brushes against his ravaged back, that pain seems a small price to pay for warmth and comfort when he thought he’d never have either again.

He doesn’t so much want to cry as feel he should be crying, but he doesn’t. He simply lies still and luxuriates in warmth, listening to the voices without ever once hearing them and, offhandedly, lets reality slip from his grasp again.

 _Oh… are you going back to the hospital?  
Yes. There’s no more to do here.  
Mm. You’re probably right, Aya-kun. Oh, can you call me, when you get there? I – I’ll need to know Youji-kun’s condition for the re—  
You don’t need to rationalize concern, Omi.  
… Aya-kun?_

It hurts to move. Further analysis is impossible. The why is ever-present, little more than half-hidden beneath the simple fact of injury and he doesn’t want to think about it. It won’t go away if he pretends, for now, that the pain means nothing.

Still cold, still horribly aware that he wants to cry and denying it because there is nothing to do but deny it while he still has his pride, or what remains of it, Ken lies on his front under stifling sheets and searches grimly for sleep. He is exhausted and feverish and harried by his own thoughts; his head and arms and chest and back hurt and coughing is an ordeal, he is torn apart inside, he wants to scream. He never has liked the way illness walks hand in hand with injury.

Aya, a pair of narrow-framed glasses balanced schoolmarm-style on the end of his nose, watches him over the banked pages of a paperback book as if waiting for something and Ken wishes he would go away. He appreciates the sentiment but feels stifled by the demonstration of his teammates’ anxiety. He doesn’t feel he deserves their concern, moreover he wants only peace. The ticking of the clock, the faint rasp of turning pages as Aya loses patience and his attention drifts back to his novel, are the only sounds. Ken wants to turn the radio on, wants something real and concrete and focused in the now to cling to like a drowning man to driftwood and so keep himself from thinking, but a swell of dizziness and the sudden pain lancing through his body when he tries to sit trap him where he lies. Ken turns away to hide the tears in his eyes. He tells himself it is only because he hurts.

(Never mind that he is besieged by memory. He remembers the damp only too clearly, remembers breathing in air that felt clammy and the hideous chill of the uneven cement floor against bare skin; he hadn’t wanted to lie there. Remembers shock, humiliation, desperate fury. The memories hurt too, will go on hurting long after his injuries have, superficially at least, healed. I didn’t want to, I didn’t want him to do it…)

He wants Schuldig dead so badly it is palpable. He can imagine with desperate clarity the soft _snick_ of his bugnuk claws slipping into place, the feel of it as they tear through tissue, catching slightly on bone or cartilage only to be wrenched free with a single sickening twist. He sees glazing eyes and slowing pulses, can almost sense the sudden hot spray of blood pattering soft as spring rain across face and neck and smeared over hands and forearms, cliché of a murderer. Even in extremis Schuldig, Ken thinks, will smile still, as if to die at all were just another grim joke. Ken can imagine every single detail, every last lingering second of the man’s murder and knows that, perhaps uniquely, he would feel no guilt for it. And it would make no difference, none at all.

Revenge is senseless. Empty. That was the secret Kase murmured the night he died.

Might as well say he can do nothing. Ken is devastated, he is furious, he hates Schuldig but despises himself. He misses his mother. He wishes it was last week forever, wishes he didn’t feel himself bereaved…

He cries silently into his pillow and prays Aya hasn’t noticed. He can’t stand the annihilation that is his friends’ sympathy.

 _You remember those briefings Manx gave us?  
Well… yes, but—  
They’re crap. Totally goddamn useless._

They tell the girls in the shop that his father has died.

Omi came up with the cover story on the first night, bickering briefly with Aya over the details. They reject heart attacks as too vague, finally settling on a stroke. When Omi tells him about it later, an awkward expression on his face (well, we had to say something, Ken-kun), Ken only nods and smiles vaguely and says, _all right_. It hardly seems to the time to bring up what actually happened, with Dad.

As an excuse it’s perfectly serviceable, his brief absence justified by the claim he was out of the city, his pallor and uncharacteristic silence and air of discontented distraction explained away as grief so raw it bleeds. A fortuitous cold snap and the fallacy of memory keeps anyone from questioning the fact he has taken to wearing long-sleeved tops. With lowered heads, with sidelong glances through falls of glossy hair, the girls whisper behind their hands; the braver ones offer clumsy condolences and vague reminiscences of relatives of their own. Two of them mention pets – they can’t help their innocence. Ken attempts a smile and says he’d rather not talk about it and they pretend to understand.

Ken misses Youji and can’t work up the nerve to go and see him (he hasn’t ventured outside once yet; the world seems all at once to be a big and crowded and frightening place and he is alone, he is all alone). He wonders if Youji hates him, and if he should take up Omi’s single tentative offer of – he doesn’t know what to call it, support perhaps? _Do you want to talk about it_? He couldn’t even answer.

Aside from that they haven’t mentioned the rape. Ken wishes they would. He suspects they’re waiting for him to do it and he doesn’t know if he can. He can’t find the words for what he’s feeling. He longs for his friends to dare to be indiscreet.

He withdraws. Ken talks to no one if he doesn’t have to, keeps his head lowered, seems to draw defensively in on himself when he sits; it’s nothing but a betrayal but he can’t make himself stop. He carelessly pushes up one sleeve exposing an arm bandaged to the elbow and hastily tugs it back down the moment he realizes what he has done. Both his teammates notice he has stopped answering the phone. Manx arrives, as ever without warning, but for once she arrives empty-handed and tells them only that Kritiker is temporarily standing them down from duty before she leaves, frustrated by the way her agents have closed ranks against her.

Aya broods about it all evening, causing Omi no end of relief when he sullenly slips off to the hospital, but Ken can’t work out if Persia means the move to be seen as a punishment or a favor.

 _What exactly happened between you and Schwarz?  
Nothing. Nothing happened.  
Oh, Siberian. You never were a very convincing liar—  
Leave me alone, Manx. _

Ken never dreams. More precisely he never remembers his dreams through anything other than the discreet traces they leave behind. He is thankful for it; he is at least dimly aware that a lot of his dreams are extremely unpleasant and have been for a while. Often, sometimes as often as two or three times in the course of a single week, he rises with the lingering awareness that he has slept extremely poorly. It’s one of the reasons Ken goes running. It wakes him up; it helps to tire him out. He usually sleeps better when he’s exhausted. But he can’t bring himself to leave the shop, he is still too sick to run. It bothers him. He misses the hush of the muted predawn streets, the way the city holds it breath as it waits for the day to begin. His sleep is suffering. He is dreaming nightly now and he knows that they distress him.

This one has him wake screaming. And still he can’t remember a thing.

It isn’t any kind of comfort any more. Now he finds he wants, more, he needs to know. He needs to know what’s lurking in his subconscious because not to know frightens him far more than he will ever admit. He can’t destroy something he doesn’t understand. It isn’t fair, Ken thinks furiously. This isn’t fair, why me, haven’t I lost enough?

(Why do some people’s lives run so graceful and smooth all the way from birth to dispiritingly easy death when here he is, nineteen years old – just – and already utterly out of options, presiding over a train wreck?)

Ken has been murdered and left alive.

Half three in the morning and Ken stares wide-eyed at the ceiling, and feels stained, and wonders if he should take another shower. Another shower: he’d need to get Omi to re-dress the wounds on his back again. It wouldn’t be so bad if Omi didn’t always agree so readily, why does the kid have to _understand_? Is he more concerned by the tainted feeling that clings to his skin, or the pain that standing and walking will cause him? Who showers at half three in the morning, and just what is he trying to wash away? Perhaps he is losing his mind. Somewhere in the back of his mind Schuldig smiles at him and he’s too tired to deal with it, too tired to much care if he’s going crazy, or rather more so, or not. He isn’t sure if Schuldig is an improvement on Kase but at least Schuldig only hates him.

To Ken's mind everything gets worse when tainted with exhaustion. He turns onto his front and closes his eyes and feels like the only person in the world who’s still awake and who cares if it’s noon in America? The worst thing is that this isn’t even new; it’s the same old problem showing off a brand new coat. Oh, go away. Just go away.

Sometime this week Youji will be discharged.

He already knows it’s hardly worth trying to get back to sleep.

 _Where’s Ken?  
… You mean he isn’t in his room? _

And though Ken has always been good at running, even he can’t run forever.

He knows he has to confront it sometime and better that he does it now, on his own terms, than that he is forced into it on someone else’s. The decision, like so many of his decisions, is an impetuous one and he slips away from Aya and Omi without a goodbye, hesitating on the shop’s doorstep only momentarily before slipping unheeded into the evening-crowded streets. He doesn’t want the others trying to talk him out of resolution because he knows they’d manage. Doesn’t want Omi, citing his continued debility, pointing out the painfully obvious – that he’s in no state to go walking. Ken knows he isn’t and he doesn’t care, or not enough; he feels cooped up and frustrated. He needs to do – anything, as long as it’s not sit home and think. Ken is tired of thinking.

Tired of hiding, too, of letting Schuldig win by default. He always has been competitive.

He doesn’t want them to know where he’s going. Not when it would probably lead to the offer of company, a lift down, someone, metaphorically, to shelter behind even if it is Omi and Omi is smaller than him – little things, all well-meant, all of which would make what he has to do impossible. Some things have to be done alone.

The city seems noisier than he remembers it being, the sky trapped between oversized buildings; he is caught off-guard by the scale of things. He finds himself wondering why they, whoever they are, build everything so tall. The city is so big and the individual so small, so easily lost in the noise and the clamor. He wonders, is this deliberate? It is cold outside, and Ken is thankful for his jacket. Thankful, too, for his own comparative anonymity. For now he still fits in, at least on the surface.

He is surprised by how quickly he reaches the hospital. Ken seems to remember the journey as taking longer than that. He is sure, too, that he has walked more slowly than usual. For a moment he does little more than linger on the paving outside, gazing up at the bruised and menacing skies and ignoring the ebb and flow of people about the entrance; a pair of housemen smoking snatched cigarettes, an anxious salaryman with new father written all over him half-hidden behind an expensive bouquet (should he have brought flowers? How stupid to arrive empty-handed and him a florist), a weary young mother struggling with a fractious infant in an overburdened pushchair. The child casts a soft toy to the floor in a fit of pique and Ken instinctively retrieves it, brushing off the woman’s slightly distracted thank you. It’s nothing, he says, and means it. After that it seems silly to stay by the doors.

Ken realizes he is frightened, but he can’t handle the uncertainty any longer. At least if he knows what Youji thinks of him he won’t have to worry about it any more. There isn’t much he can do about his situation, but he needs the therapy of action. He needs to at least be able to pretend he is something other than helpless.


	7. Covenant

He smiles as if in apology for the intrusion as he slips through the half-open door and shuts it gently behind him, leaning far too casually against it and glancing about himself in free and frank curiosity. In some respects Ken hasn’t changed a bit though Youji, sat on the top of his bedsheets, propped uncomfortably against a promiscuous clutter of pillows, a magazine open and overlooked on his lap, instantly reads the smile as a fake and the calm as purest pretense. Displacement activity, an attempt to put off the moment when, inevitably, they will have to meet one another’s eyes.

“Did you know there’s no name card on your door?”

Youji has wondered what it will be like to see Ken again. In truth he wasn’t expecting anything of the sort until he made it back home, working from what Omi and (when pressed) Aya have told him though even Omi hasn’t said much. It’s none of my business, really, Omi had said awkwardly. Ken is where it matters an intensely private person: they all know that.

If something strikes Youji as he studies Ken discreetly from behind the camouflage of his curls it is how entirely ordinary Ken looks, how much of the boy is exactly as he remembers it being. The black long-sleeved sweater where before he would probably have stuck in short sleeves, cold weather be damned, strikes a false note, but it seems a small thing. He might only have worn it to keep the girls who haunted the shop from asking about the bandages which would be swathing his arms. Now that the fact of Ken's presence forces him to think about it Youji can’t quite imagine why he would ever have expected it to be otherwise, and yet he _had_ expected it to be otherwise, no doubt about that.

Maybe Youji has imagined the slight note of unease in Ken's smile, or maybe it has always been there and he only notices it now because he is thinking to search for it. Ken isn’t looking at him; he isn’t looking at anything. He is gazing past him and out of the window at the unremarkable view, the threatening evening clouds, one foot resting against the door’s bland white surface and hiding discomfiture behind an unconvincing smile. Hanging back. He looks almost shy, as if Youji is someone he’s barely met – and yet that’s not it at all.

Youji tries to meet his friend’s eyes, and is unnerved to find he can’t bring himself to do it.

“You can come in, Ken,” he says, and it sounds awkward. He stumbles slightly over the single syllable of Ken's name.  
Ken blinks, as if the invitation surprises him. “Did you know about the name thing?” He asks, adding, as if to excuse the question’s odd sound, “I wasn’t sure I’d got the right room. Because there was no name card. Um, how are you?” It occurs to him that he doesn’t actually know where Youji has been shot.  
“Getting by.” Youji sighs. He can tell Ken is far from recovered himself, tell by the exhausted cast to his features, the way he holds himself. Youji knows Ken too well not to know when he is denying pain. “For God’s sake, Hidaka, sit down. You look like you’re about to pass out. Did you walk here?”  
Ken smiles and shrugs; he can’t think why Youji still worries. “Sorry,” he says uneasily, and wonders what he’s really apologizing for.  
“Fine, you’re sorry. Sit down.”

And it is easiest for Ken to acquiesce. He smiles again – and why can’t he stop goddamn _smiling_? – sitting uncertainly on the edge of the bed and shifting his weight as if he can’t quite get comfortable. Hard for either of them to tell if he is simply sitting awkwardly or if his unease cuts deeper than bodily disquiet. The indefinable hospital smell that clings to the room, the cloying, overwhelming odor of disinfectant camouflaging a multitude of half-hidden sins, perturbs him. An uncomfortable scent, evoking memories he would like to deny possessing. You never were a good liar… Ken suspects he could really grow to hate hospitals.

(Guilt lurks discreetly by the door, a patient shadow. Biding its time.)

And it is odd, Youji thinks, that being in Ken's company should feel so profoundly awkward, their divided burden seemingly serving only to drive them apart even as it drags them into a strange, uneasy kind of proximity. Ken is near enough for him to touch and yet Youji can do no such thing for the distance between them is unbridgeable although it is no distance at all. Paradox. He can’t talk to Ken and if he can’t talk to Ken then who _can_ he talk to?

The silence between them seems, a bad cliché, far too loud. Strange the way clichés do that, how the truth of them catches a guy unawares.

Footsteps – a nurse, from their quick, purposeful tread – carry from the corridor and with them the gentle clamor of women’s voices, the intrusive high-pitched chime of an infusion pump’s alarm as the device stridently protests its sudden inability to do its job. Ken knows he closed the door properly so why all the noise? It seems funny in all senses of the word, though the joke is a bleak one, that hospitals should stick in the mind as quiet, sanctified places when in reality they should be so unyieldingly noisy; the clamor never stops. One of the nurses in the corridor is laughing. When I get out of here, Youji thinks dourly, I’m going to sleep for a week.

“I’m sorry,” Ken says again, suddenly and with an air of great resolution.

Youji raises his head, meeting Ken's eyes for – can it really be the first time since he arrived? – to discover Ken, head almost quizzically inclined, looking at him from the corners of his eyes and his demeanor is only apologetic. It is as if he is waiting to see how much trouble he is in this time and he is clearly expecting trouble. A maddeningly familiar expression, that.

“Sorry?” Youji can’t quite pretend he hasn’t been caught off-guard by the confession, on some level amazed, another frankly appalled. Sorry, Ken? As if he hadn’t apologized once already, and entirely needlessly at that… “What are you apologizing for now?”  
Ken shrugs. Says simply, “This.”

Oh, God, and he means it, and all his apology is to Youji is – it is agonizing. It is sudden pain, unexpected and unwarranted. It is a slap in the face from a woman he loves, it is Asuka, her eyes furious, berating him for a slight he never intended and can’t even remember he gave. As if Ken had been anything other than utterly innocent. Youji doesn’t know whose fault their situation is but he’s damned sure it isn’t Ken's.

“Why are you saying that?” Youji says, and his voice is sharp and incredulous. Where has the anger come from, and who is it aimed at? “That’s not how it works and you know it! Schuldig raped you and you’re sitting there _apologizing_?” (And he thinks he sees Ken start slightly, but he ignores it, has no option but to ignore it.) “You’re not stupid, Ken. Don’t play it.”  
“No, Youji,” Ken says; he sounds only horribly tired. “That’s not it. I—” He breaks off, fighting back nausea, a strange taste in the mouth and certain tightening in the back of the throat. Call it self-disgust. He can’t claim it’s unwarranted. “He… Schuldig wasn’t lying. We really did make a deal. Don’t you get it?” When Youji does nothing but watch him, for all the world as if he hasn’t heard or has determined to make this harder than it has to be Ken adds softly, despairingly, wishing he didn’t have to speak and shatter Youji’s illusions so, “I consented.”  
“You _consented_?” Youji echoes incredulously. “Ken…”  
Ken really does flinch this time, flushing in sheer humiliation – he has misread him utterly. “I’m sorry, Youji,” he says frantically. “I thought…” But he doesn’t know what to say he thought. He hasn’t a clue what he’d been thinking. Only thing, he still thinks it was worth it. Do you hate me for it?  
“You call that consent?” The shock is plain in Youji’s voice. “Just what did he say to you? No, don’t tell me… he threatened me, didn’t he?”

(Don’t you dare blame yourself, Ken. I did this.)

Ken says nothing. He only stares, his lips parted slightly in preparation for the words he can’t seem to find, his deep brown eyes wide and troubled. This isn’t working out the way he’d imagined it would; yes, he’d expected Youji’s anger but he’d expected that anger to be directed at him so why in the world isn’t it? Why doesn’t Youji realize how stupid he’s been? Ken looks cornered, angry and frightened and desperately embarrassed and what can he say? Youji is demanding the truth and how can he honestly answer a question like that without making it look like he’s trying to pass the blame? It’s so difficult, it’s so fucking _painful_ , and it’s no more than he deserves. Yes, he’s scared.

“What,” Youji demands brusquely, “did he say, Ken?”  
“I fucked up,” Ken says in a small, weary voice he can barely recognize as his own. Youji frowns and looks as if he is about to interrupt, but Ken cuts him off. “No, listen to me. Schuldig got the drop on me, that’s all. I should’ve…”  
“Shut up, Hidaka,” Youji says quietly and calmly and somehow it leaves Ken more afraid than if the blonde had screamed at him, or punctuated his words with a backhanded slap. “Don’t you dare try and tell me you consented ever again. If you think _that_ was consent you don’t know the meaning of the word! Schuldig threatened me and you wanted to keep me safe, even if it meant killing yourself. Right?” You bloody fool!  
“He said he’d kill you,” Ken replies flatly, but there is a copper taint at the back of his mouth and he knows he is hesitating on the verge of tears. “What was I supposed to have done?”  
Oh, Christ. It’s Asuka all over again only somehow they’ve both survived and still it hurts; life sticks in the groove, the phrase repeats itself until all sense is gone. “So you’d have died for me instead? Don’t you think I want you to live?”  
Ken blinks. “But he was asking me.”

It was that or he killed the both of us, Youji. What else could I do?

Ken doesn’t want an answer. Same result: I’d take a bullet for you. The difference is in the detail.

Worst thing is that in a hideous way he is nothing but grateful. Grateful to even be having this conversation, horrible though it is. Somehow he’s almost happy. He wouldn’t have done anything different even knowing the price. Maybe life stinks but at least he’s alive to appreciate just how fucking awful survival is…

Ken smiles, but it makes no difference; he still looks like he wants to cry and never mind that he can’t do that. He can’t cry on top of everything else but he isn’t quite sure why it is important to hold back now. He must have lost so much ground in Youji’s eyes already that the quiet indignity of his tears really can’t matter any more (Youji’s seen him do worse; the thought really makes him want to cry). But they do, and it surprises him that they do.

And Youji doesn’t think he’s ever realized quite how resilient Ken really is before now. The boy sits on the edge of his bed, head bowed, eyes closed in a desperate, futile attempt to hide the tears that form there, hands resting on his upper arms as if he is cold and all Youji can think is God, he’s strong. He’s always been so strong and he doesn’t even know it. Ken doesn’t appreciate how very difficult what he’s done truly is, and it hadn’t even occurred to him to do otherwise. You don’t know what the Hell you’ve got, Ken, Youji thinks, and feels himself smile mournfully.

It hurts that all Schuldig could think about someone as remarkable as Ken was how best to use him, that all he ever was to the Schwarz was a body. He could have been anyone at all, not that anyone at all would have thrown themselves away for someone else’s sake in the same way Ken had done. In all honesty Youji doesn’t know if he could ever have done the same. Maybe he could, if the circumstances were right – but Ken, he knows, hadn’t cared that he was Youji but only that he was a person who, in his eyes, deserved to live. He’d have done it for anyone.

That he wouldn’t think twice about selling himself cheap is what makes Ken far too fine to do it.

“That doesn’t make what happened your fault,” Youji says softly. He’d rather Ken blame him than that he blamed himself. Ken had been in the wrong place, he’d been victimized only because he cared. If anyone had screwed up Youji knew it was him, not Ken. “You’re not thinking. You were threatened. You’d never have let that bastard Schuldig get anywhere near you if he hadn’t forced you into it.”  
“But I fucked _up_ ,” Ken says desperately, as if he is trying to talk Youji out of blaming himself. “I should never…”  
Youji cuts him off. “No. You can’t consent to anything with a gun to your head, Kenken.”

He doesn’t really mean to take Ken's hand. As his fingers close around Ken's (encountering warm, callused skin and the soft yet oddly uncomfortable rasp of the bandages that cross his palms), he feels Ken recoil and try, almost without intending to, to pull his hand free. Youji holds on tight and waits and the moment passes, Ken looking mistrustfully at him for a moment but, for whatever reason, consenting to the contact. He’d always been a tactile person, Ken; to think of him withdrawing into miserable isolation simply because of Schuldig leaves Youji disgusted with himself. Look what you’ve done, Kudou; you can’t leave him like this.

Ken accepts it, after a beat abstractedly letting his fingers close around Youji’s own. He knows Youji needs the reassurance so much more than he does.

“This isn’t your fault,” Youji says emphatically, meeting and holding Ken's gaze (and he can tell Ken wants to look away, but somehow he doesn’t). “Don’t blame yourself.”

Blame me, his eyes are saying. Lay it on me instead. Why does he want to be blamed for something he couldn’t help? Ken doesn’t understand, it doesn’t make sense. He fucked up and played into Schuldig’s hands and now Youji wants him to say no, it’s not my fault, it’s yours? But what was Youji ever supposed to do, Ken wonders, against a mad bastard of a German with lightning-fast reflexes and a goddammed handgun? Youji’s good with that wire of his, Ken knows, but there’s only so far _good_ will take him when he’s up against a Schwarz who’s playing for keeps. Youji’s just lucky that Schuldig, for all of his posturing, appears to be a pretty lousy shot. Lucky to be alive.

They’re both damned lucky to be alive.

When Ken thinks about what they could have lost, which he admits he probably isn’t doing enough, his present grief seems horribly petty. He wonders if Youji thinks he’s overdoing it.

“For God’s sake,” Ken says impatiently, “what will hating you help? You made a _mistake_ , that’s all!”  
Youji surprises himself when he starts to laugh softly. Only you. Ken always had been eerily forgiving; he was eager to trust and – Youji had always said this, long before things had become personal – far too willing to grant second chances to those who’d done absolutely nothing to warrant them. How could Ken consider him irreproachable? He doesn’t deserve his understanding. “No, I’m the one who screwed up, Ken,” Youji says after a moment has passed. “Not you. If you hadn’t shown up when you did, I’d have died for sure. None of this would ever have happened if I’d just had a bit of sense.”  
“That doesn’t mean you did it,” Ken says firmly. “I’m not going to hate you because you want me to, you moron. You didn’t make Schuldig… well, you know.” He blushes again, turning to the window and raising his eyebrows when he notices, as if for the first time, the gathering dusk. It must have taken him longer to get here than he realized. At some point it has started, reluctantly, to rain and the heavy droplets patter shyly and erratically against the windowpanes. “But you didn’t. Shit, it’s late. I’m gonna have to go soon, right?”  
“Forget it,” Youji says. I don’t want you to leave. Not yet. He can’t tell if Ken is making a clumsy attempt to change the subject or if he’s simply making a blunt, if rather off-kilter observation – being, in other words, himself. “Listen, if it’s not my fault then it’s definitely not yours. I don’t want you blaming yourself over this. It’s not your fault you care.”

He speaks firmly, a parent trying to talk round an adamantly anguished child but he suspects Ken won’t begin to believe him or even really hear. Trauma is an obdurate creature, clinging ferociously to its host with teeth and claws buried deep beneath the skin; Ken single-minded by his very nature. A poor combination. He wouldn’t get over what he’d been through overnight no matter how badly Youji might wish, if only to ease his own guilty conscience, that could happen.

Youji wants too much. Ken will never truly get over it – to ask that of him would be, after such an intimate and calculating violation, to ask the impossible. Youji only knows that he mustn’t blame himself. It could never be Ken's fault. In time, he promises himself, he’ll make Ken understand where the responsibility really lies, even if all it means is that Ken ends up hating him for it…

Youji has yet to truly comprehend that Schuldig targeted him, too. He has yet to realize he is also a victim.

“Christ, Youji, I’ve been such an idiot,” Ken says wistfully.

He slumps forward, lets the plane of one cheek rest lightly against Youji’s shoulder as he continues to gaze, blank and uncomprehending, through the window at the contradictory rain. He can’t think why he does it when the feel of another’s body so close to his makes him want to scream and he hates the way Youji puts his arms round him, but all the same he needs it and he doesn’t pull away for solitude is even worse. He needs Youji to understand because someone out there has to and he’s such a fuck-up and he doesn’t know what to do any more, or why he came here, or anything at all…

Ken isn’t crying, but once again he can’t escape the feeling that by rights he should be. No, he can’t believe. Not yet, maybe not ever. He probably _is_ overreacting, but what can he do about that? It hurts. It all hurts so goddamned much and there’s absolutely nothing he can do. Schuldig raped him. It isn’t fair.

And holding him is a subtle agony. Youji closes his eyes because he can’t bear to look any more. It’s his fault they’re here.

“I’ll kill him, Ken,” Youji murmurs feverishly, and once again the idea of it, distant and hopeless though it is, proves a strange kind of consolation. “He should never have done that to you.” To us – but he can’t say that. Can’t admit to the fact that he needs Schuldig dead for his own sake too, because to do so will be to lose something vital…  
Ken doesn’t move. He tastes copper, feels a hot, familiar something stinging the corners of his eyes and he quickly closes them, the last resort of those desperate to hold back tears (maybe that way it won’t happen). “You can try,” he says, and he sounds forsaken, frightened, curiously childlike, “but what will that change?”

There are no answers.

 _-ende-_


End file.
